Supreme Court to hear text message privacy case

The Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide whether privacy rights covered a worker's personal text message on employer-owned equipment, hearing a case about a police officer who sent sexually explicit messages from his department-issued pager. The Justices agreed to review a ruling by a federal appeals court in California that reading the text messages sent on devices provided by the employer violated the worker's privacy rights and amounted to an "unreasonable search" barred by the Constitution. The city appealed to the Supreme Court, saying employers typically have policies in place establishing that workers have no expectation of privacy in electronic communications on employer-owned equipment.