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Supreme Court Still Apparently Unfamiliar With Texting and Call Waiting

By Eric Lipman

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard argument in City of Ontario v. Quon. The case is about whether a SWAT team sergeant in Ontario, Calif., had a reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages sent via a department-issued pager, despite a department policy stating pretty clearly that messages could be audited at any time. Not just any text messages, mind you, but some dirty, dirty text messages between said sergeant and 1) his wife, 2) his mistress and 3) a fellow officer. "To Protect and Sext" would look great on the side panels of a black and white. The 9th Circuit held (PDF) that the cop did have such an expectation of privacy, and that the search of his messages conducted by the city (with the aid of the wireless company) after Sgt. Quon repeatedly went over his message allowance was unreasonable as a matter of law. But, then again, this is the 9th Circuit we're talking about. Marcia Coyle had some pregame predictions of the argument in Friday's National Law Journal. According to Lyle Denniston's recap at SCOTUSBlog, the Justices seemed to be leaning pretty heavily toward reversing, and finding there was no reasonable expectation of privacy. But Adam Liptak,...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on April 20, 2010 (boomark / email).