The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the ruling of a lower court and ruled that government entities checking into the personal text messages of their employees on government-owned devices do not violate an employee's constitutional rights.

The case came out of a search of text messages sent by police sergeant Jeff Quon in Ontario, Calif. via his department pager. The police department decided to audit text-message usage by its employees, it found that Quon sent or received 456 messages during work hours in just one month, and nearly 400 were personal and some sexually explicit.

The opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy made it clear that governments can check to be sure their employees are following the rules. Quon and three others who had sent him the messages sued, contending that the search violated their constitutional rights. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that since a police official had informally told officers that no one would be audited if the officers personally paid for charges above their monthly allowance, the officers had a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their text messages to establish that their constitutional rights had been violated.

For more:
- see this AP News article

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