On June 17th, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a public employer did not violate an employee's constitutional privacy rights by searching his personal text messages that were sent and received on his employer-issued pager.

The Supreme Court held that the search was reasonable and permissible because it was motivated by a legitimate work-related purpose and wasn't excessive in scope. Although the case involved a public employer, the Court related the situation to private employers as well by noting, "For these same reasons - that the employer had a legitimate reason for the search, and that the search was not excessively intrusive in light of that justification - the Court also concludes that the search would be 'regarded as reasonable and normal in the private-employer context.'"

Importance of Policies

One thing employers should take away from this case is the importance of privacy policies. The employer in this case had a "Computer Usage, Internet and E-Mail Policy" that specified that employees had no expectation of privacy or confidentiality when using computers, e-mail, or the Internet. The policy also included clarification that the policy also applied to pager text messages.

However, in this case, the employee contended that he had an expectation of privacy with the text messages because a supervisor informally told him that they would be private if he paid the overage charges himself. This situation illustrates the need for employers to not only have privacy policies but also make sure supervisors are uniformly enforcing them.

Full text of the court’s opinion can be found at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1332.pdf.

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