On Thursday, June 17, the United States Supreme Court upheld the discipline of a police officer for sending personal and some sexually explicit text messages on a city provided pager. In Ontario v. Quon, the Supreme Court assumed without holding that the police officer had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his text messages. It did so given its explicit hesitancy to answer the question because of "[r]apid changes in the dynamics of communications and information transmission." In any event, the Court concluded that despite the assumed privacy expectation, the City had reasonably searched the texts because (1) the stated basis for the search---to determine the reasonableness of the text character limitations---was justified at its inception, (2) the investigator had only reviewed the officer's texts sent while on duty, and (3) it was reasonable for the officer to expect that his texts would be subject to audit given his role as a police officer.Labels: First Amendment, Government Employees, Government Employer, United States Supreme Court