Legal News

Stop Your Snooping! Court Limits Employers? Ability to Search Email

By Dan Slater

While we’re on the topic of e-mails (See the Bear Stearns indictment), let’s shoot over to the West Coast, where the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently limited the ability of employers to obtain e-mails and text messages sent by employees on company-financed devices. Here’s the story from the LAT, and here’s the opinion.

The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel, reports the LAT, was the first federal appellate decision to provide 4th Amendment protection to electronic messages. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit by Ontario, Calif., Police Sgt. Jeff Quon and three others against the city’s service provider and the city and Police Department for violating the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure. The ruling also gives all government workers 4th Amendment protection against searches of text and e-mail communications by their bosses.

The facts that precipitated the suit: In August 2002, Quon and another officer exceeded a department limit of 25,000 characters per month for texting. The police chief ordered a subordinate to obtain transcripts of the officers’ text messages from the provider, Arch Wireless, to determine whether the pagers were being used purely for work purposes.

“I think right now service providers are going to be a little leery of providing anything to the subscriber because of this case,” John H. Horwitz, who represented Arch Wireless in the case, told the LAT.

Dieter C. Dammeier, who represented Quon, said the case would return to the lower court to determine monetary damages.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 19, 2008 (boomark / email).