Public Employees, Pagers and Privacy

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in The City of Ontario v. Quon yesterday: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1332.pdf

This had been a widely anticipated decision in employment law circles because it was assumed that the Court would give guidance on employees’ privacy interests in private communication on employer-owned communication devices, like pagers and cell phones.  However, the Court’s opinion, written by Justice Kennedy, decided not to decide “the whole concept of privacy expectations in communications made on electronic equipment owned by a government employer.”  Instead the Court decided the case applying basic Fourth Amendment principles:

[W]hen conducted for a “noninvestigatory, work-related purpos[e]”or for the “investigatio[n] of work-related misconduct,” a government employer’s warrantless search is reasonable if it is “‘justified at its inception’” and if “‘the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of’” the circumstances giving rise to the search. 480 U. S., at 725–726.

Slip Opinion at 12.

Score one for judicial restraint, but employers do not have much more guidance on how to evaluate employees’ privacy interests than they did before this decision.

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