High court to hear texting privacy case

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case that questions whether text messages that employees send on a company account can be kept secret from their employer.

The case, known as City of Ontario v. Quon, focuses on personal and often explicit text messages sent and received by police Sgt. Jeffrey Quon on a department-issued pager.

Supervisors at the Ontario, Calif., department sought the transcripts of Sgt. Quon’s texts in 2002 because he had gone over his text-message allowance.

Sgt. Quon complained that the department violated his privacy, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed.

The city is appealing that ruling to the Supreme Court, which is likely to hear arguments in the spring.

Also Monday, the court declined to hear about 150 cases, including the case of four former detainees of the naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who sought to appeal a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit alleging they were tortured at the prison.