NU Online News Service, June 24, 11:15 p.m. EDT

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the right of amunicipality to examine the text messages of a public employee hascreated speculation that the ruling could set a precedent forprivate employers or others.

In the City of Ontario v. Quon, the court unanimously upheld theright of Ontario, Calif. to examine the personal texts of a citypolice officer, Jeff Quon, on his city-provided pager. In thiscase, the city was examining the messages because it wasconsidering increasing the amount employees could send.

Police department officials found some inappropriate texts sentby Quon, who sued Ontario and said the search of his texts was aviolation of the Fourth Amendment.

The ruling was specific to government employees who usegovernment equipment and who have been warned they could not expectprivacy, but Jack McCalmon, of the Tulsa, Okla.-based riskmanagement firm McCalmon Group, said the case could createquestions for employers in the private sector. Employers, he said,may begin to cite the case.

"There is still a void there because the court intentionally didnot make itself clear," Mr. McCalmon said. "It wasn't going to usethis case to address privacy issues everywhere but someone willneed to soon."

This issue--the impact of technology on employees andemployers--is moving fast, Mr. McCalmon said.

"Here [Mr. Quon] was warned that his emails could be read, buthe didn't think that applied to his texts," Mr. McCalmon said. "Nowyou can equate the two...on the public level."

The Supreme Court ruling overturned the U.S. Court of Appealsfor the Ninth Circuit, which upheld an earlier ruling that Mr.Quon's rights were violated.

Justice Antonin Scalia said the court did not need to addresswhether its ruling applied in general to employees withemployer-issued pagers because the city's search of Mr. Quon'stexts did not violate the Fourth Amendment in the first place. Yetthe court brought up the subject without stating its stance,something Justice Scalia found "indefensible."

"The-times-they-are-a-changin' is a feeble excuse for disregardof duty," he wrote. Justice Scalia said he worries lower courtswill read into the decision as a "heavy-handed hint about how theyshould proceed."

Mr. McCalmon said government employees should get a privatephone for private texts.