Virginia Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice Blog

Supreme Court: Privacy of Text Messages? You got to be kidding!

The Supreme Court of the United States will hear a case next year that answers this question:

If your employer issues you a cell phone/pager and you send personal messages on it, do you have an expectation of privacy?

My answer: "heck no!"

Apparently a policeman in Ontario, California was using his pager to send secually explicit emails to his girlfriend. His boss found out and bad things happened.

His argument? "I had to pay for the personal messages...so I expected that they would be private?"

This argument doesn't make sense on any level. How, exactly, did he think that anyone would ever be able to decide what was "personal" and what was "work related?"

Now...how did the case get there? The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals...(a circuit that includes California) decided that the search of this guy's explicit personal emails violated the 4th Amendment.

My prediction: slam dunk reversal and a clear ruling that if you mess around with what your employer gave you you stand to lose your job.