Texting On Your Work Issued Phone: Can The boss Read Your Messages?

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court said Monday it will decide how much privacy workers have when they send text messages from company accounts.
The justices said they will review a federal appeals court ruling that sided with Ontario, Calif., police officers who complained that the department improperly snooped on their electronic exchanges. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco also faulted the text-messaging service for turning over transcripts of the messages without the officers' consent.
Users of text-messaging services "have a reasonable expectation of privacy" regarding messages stored on the service provider's network, 9th Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw said. Both the city and USA Mobility Wireless, Inc., which bought the text-messaging service involved in the case, appealed the 9th Circuit ruling.
The justices turned down the company's appeal, but said they would hear arguments in the spring in the city's case.
The appeals court ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Ontario police Sgt. Jeff Quon and three others after Arch Wireless gave their department transcripts of Quon's text messages in 2002. Police officials read the messages to determine whether department-issued pagers were being used solely for work purposes.
The city said it discovered that Quon sent and received hundreds of personal messages, including many that were sexually explicit.
Quon and the others said the police force had an informal policy of not monitoring the usage as long as employees paid for messages in excess of monthly character limits.
The case is City of Ontario v. Quon, 08-1332.

Regal Entertainment Group to Pay $175,000 for Sex Harassment of Man by Female Co-Worker

EEOC Said Manager Also Retaliated Against Victim and Supervisors Who Tried to Help

LOS ANGELES – Regal Entertainment Group, a national movie theater chain, will pay $175,000 and furnish significant remedial relief to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today. The EEOC had charged that the company subjected a male employee to sexual harassment by a female co-worker and then retaliated against him for complaining about the unlawful conduct – along with two supervisors who tried to help.
In its lawsuit, the EEOC charged that a male employee at a Regal theater in Marina del Rey, Calif., a section of Los Angeles, was subjected to a sexually hostile workplace by a female co-worker who repeatedly grabbed his crotch. When the male victim and his direct supervisor complained to the theater’s then-general manager, she failed to take adequate steps to stop or prevent the harassment. Instead, the EEOC said, she retaliated against the harassed employee and two other supervisory employees (male and female), who are part of the EEOC’s suit. The retaliation included unwarranted discipline, unfairly lower performance evaluations and/or stricter scrutiny of performance.
Sexual harassment and retaliation for complaining about it violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC filed suit against Regal in 2006 in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (U.S. EEOC v. Regal Entertainment Group, Inc., CV06-04145-ABC [CWx]) after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement.
According to EEOC data, the percentage of men filing sexual harassment charges with the federal agency and state/local government agencies nationwide has increased over the past decade from 12 to 16 percent of all charges involving sexual harassment.