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Legal Commentary

: LawPundit

Private Texting by Employees on the Job: What are Your Rights? In City of Ontario v. Quon U.S. Supreme Court sets Reasonableness Standard

By Andis Kaulins

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The dangers of private texting and use of social media for private purposes by employees at work are discussed at Lexology by Alia S. Wynne of Fisher & Phillips LLP in her article Texting on the job can be costly, which first appeared in the August 2, 2010 edition of the Houston Chronicle and which refers to a reasonableness standard followed recently by the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in the case of City of Ontario v. Quon, No. 08-1332, 2010 WL 2400087 (US June 17, 2010).

As Aaron R. Gelb and Michael Goettig of Vedder Price PC note at Lexology in You?re not paranoid if someone really is watching you: monitoring employee use of social media, employees can expect their private text messages and social media use on the job to be reasonably examined by the employer if the employer has issued a clearly expressed policy about its right to view private text messages on the job or to monitor social media use at work:

"In City of Ontario v. Quon, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a public employer acted reasonably when it reviewed an employee?s private text messages sent and received on a device [an alphanumeric pager] issued by the employer. The City had issued a policy addressing employee use of work computers, e-mail and the Internet....
...

[T]he role of electronic communications in the workplace is evolving at a rapid pace, as is the body of law addressing those communications. Employers should update their policies and practices on a regular basis, in consultation with counsel, to ensure compliance with recent law."

Full post as published by LawPundit on August 24, 2010 (boomark / email).