SUPREME COURT FINDS WORK RELATED SEARCH OF TEXT MESSAGES REASONABLE UNDER THE FOUTH AMENDMENT

Jeff Quon, as a member of the city of Ontario, California’s SWAT team, was assigned an alphanumeric pager, capable of sending text messages. The city had a contract under which it paid a flat fee for a limited number of text messages and then paid additional for each text message above the agreed upon number.

Quon , fairly regularly exceeded the set number of messages. He was given the option of paying for the excess messages, which he accepted. But the city and the police department started an investigation to determine whether the standard number of messages was sufficient. They picked two months and viewed all of his messages, excluding those that he wrote while he was off duty. They found numerous non work related messages, some of which were of a sexual content. (Whether these were to his soon to be ex-wife or to his girl friend, I do not know. Both joined in the suit.)

He sued, claiming violations of the Fourth Amendment’s protection from illegal searches and Federal law.

Some expected the Supreme Court to break new ground and rule on the interrelationship between the new technology and the Fourth Amendment. But the court was not ready to rule on whether or not there is an expectation of privacy in text messages. Instead if answered the question based on traditional Fourth Amendment concepts. In this case prior to being given the pager Quon was familiar with the city’s policy that their was no expectation of privacy in text messages. While reading someone’s text messages is certainly a search, the Fourth Amendment does not outlaw all searches. It only forbids unreasonable searches and the Supreme Court held that a business search conducted to finds ways to make the business more efficient is not unreasonable. The search by the Ontario Police Department was conducted in order to find ways to make its use of text messages more efficient. The search had a reasonable work related purpose and it was limited in scope. Therefore it did not violate the Fourth Amendment.