Supreme Court rules on Quon.

• Position: PRIVACY - Case overview

The unanimous decision in City of Ontario v. Quon bolsters employers rights to review the content produced by employees using employer-owned communication devices. The decision marks the high court's first on an employee's privacy claims regarding personal messages sent on employer-provided equipment, according to The Kansas City Star.

At issue was whether the City of Ontario, Calif., violated Sgt. Jeff Quon's privacy rights when it reviewed personal text messages he sent and received on his department-issued pager.

When the department issued pagers to officers, it had a formal policy in place covering computer, Internet, and e-mail usage, stating that the systems were for official use only. The policy allowed "'light personal communications" but warned that employees should have no expectation of privacy.

However, there was no specific policy for text messaging. Officers were allotted 25,000 text characters monthly, and those who exceeded that amount could unofficially pay their supervisor for the overage charges. Quon and others regularly exceeded the text limit and reimbursed the department for the fees.

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When reviewing officers' pager messages to determine whether the department needed to increase officers' monthly limit for minutes, it stumbled upon thousands of personal messages, including sexually explicit ones, Quon had sent using his employer-owned device. In addition, the department found that only 57 of more than 450 messages Quon sent and received involved police business.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco found in favor of Quon, ruling that the city had infringed upon his Fourth Amendment privacy rights when it reviewed the content of his pager messages. But the Supreme Court overruled this decision, stating that the city had every right to review...