The Supreme Court on Monday leaps into the high-tech world of text messaging in a challenge with potentially huge implications for the privacy rights of senders and receivers and for workplace communications.

City of Ontario, Calif. v. Quon, one of two cases leading off the final round of oral arguments this term, is the Court’s first foray into workplace monitoring of electronic and digital communications.

The city asks the justices whether a member of its police SWAT team had a Fourth Amendment “reasonable expectation of privacy” in text messages transmitted on his SWAT pager. The case also raises the issue of whether the senders of messages to the SWAT pager had their own reasonable expectation that the city would not review their messages.

“It’s a new area. It’s complicated, and the stakes are high given the shift in how people communicate,” said Andrew Pincus, partner in the Washington office of Mayer Brown, who filed an amicus brief supporting the police officer, Jeff Quon, on behalf of civil liberties and consumer groups.

The Quon case is paired on Monday with Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, a challenge to the non-discrimination policy that the University of California Hastings College of Law applies to student groups seeking recognition for funding and services. The Court will hear six additional cases in the next two weeks before wrapping up the term’s arguments, including important challenges involving arbitration, genetically engineered crops and public disclosure of the identities of ballot petition signers.

The Quon challenge is being watched closely by a broad range of litigators — criminal defense, intellectual property, civil rights, employment and others — because the Court’s decision could have significance not just for public employers, such as Ontario, but for private ones, and for discovery of evidence as well.

via Law.com – Justices Take Up Workplace Privacy With Text Message Case.