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''Ontario v. Quon'', sometimes cited as ''City of Ontario v. Quon'', 130 S.Ct. 2619, 560 U.S. 746 (2010), is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the extent to which the right to privacy applies to electronic communications in a government workplace. It was an appeal by the city of Ontario, California, from a Ninth Circuit decision holding that it had violated the Fourth Amendment rights of two of its police officers when it disciplined them following an audit of pager text messages that discovered many of those messages were personal in nature, some sexually explicit. The Court unanimously held that the audit was work-related and thus did not violate the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Ontario police sergeant Jeff Quon, along with other officers and those they were exchanging messages with, had sued the city, their superiors and the pager service provider in federal court. They had alleged a violation of not only their constitutional rights but federal telecommunications privacy laws. Their defense was that a superior officer had promised the pager messages themselves would not be audited if the officers reimbursed the city for fees it incurred when they exceeded a monthly character limit. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion signed by seven of his fellow justices. It decided the case purely on the reasonableness of the pager audit, explicitly refusing to consider "far-reaching issues" it raised on the grounds that modern communications technology and its role in society was still evolving. He nevertheless discussed those issues at some length in explaining why the Court chose not to rule on them, in addition to responding, for argument's sake, more directly to issues raised by the respondents. John Paul Stevens wrote a separate concurring opinion, as did Antonin Scalia, who would have used a different test he had proposed in an earlier case to reach the same result. Outside commentators mostly praised the justices for this display of restraint, but Scalia criticized it harshly in his concurrence, calling it vague. He considered his fellow justices in "disregard of duty" for their refusal to address the Fourth Amendment issues. A month after the court handed down its decision, an appellate court in Georgia similarly criticized it for "a marked lack of clarity" as it narrowed an earlier ruling to remove a finding that there was no expectation of privacy in the contents of email.〔(''Rehberg v. Paulk'' ), 611 F. 3d 828, at 844,846-847 (11th Cir., 2010).〕 A ''New York Times'' article later summarized this criticism, and its "faux unanimity", as emblematic of what some judges and lawyers have found an increasingly frustrating trend in Roberts Court opinions. ==Underlying dispute== In 2001 the Ontario Police Department (OPD) acquired 20 alphanumeric pagers to distribute to officers in its SWAT unit so they could better coordinate their activities.〔Ikuta, Sandra Segal; 〕 The contract between the department and Arch Wireless, now USA Mobility, was for usage up to a fixed limit of 25,000 characters per month,〔''(Quon v. Arch Wireless Operating Company )'', 529 F.3d 892 (9th Cir., 2008).〕 above which an overage fee would be charged. Pager use was covered by the OPD's computer and Internet use policy, under which employees agreed that "the city reserves the right to monitor and log all network activity including e-mail and Internet use, with or without notice". The policy did not specifically mention text messages, but employees were told both verbally, at a staff meeting and through a memorandum that they were included and that only "light personal communications" were allowed during work hours. It also stated that "inappropriate, derogatory, obscene, suggestive, defamatory, or harassing language in the e-mail system will not be tolerated".〔 Several officers, including Sgt. Jeff Quon, a 20-year veteran of the department, exceeded the limit during the first two billing cycles. He was allowed to reimburse the city for the fee. Lt. James Duke, head of the department's Administrative Bureau, told him that his communications would not be monitored if he paid the overage,〔 but that he should stop using the pager so much. When Quon and another officer continued to exceed the limit and reimburse the city, Duke told then-Chief Lloyd Scharf he was "tired of being a bill collector". The OPD began to consider whether the character limit it had contracted for was too low and it was forcing officers to pay for work-related communications, as had sometimes happened in the past. At Scharf's direction, Duke requested from Arch transcripts of text messages sent by Quon and the other officer. After verifying that the city was the subscriber on the account, an Arch employee sent Duke the transcripts. Many messages were personal and some were sexually explicit, sent by the married Quon to his girlfriend at work. In one month as few as 8% of Quon's texts had been work-related. A transcript from which messages sent when Quon and the other officer were off-duty had been redacted was sent to the OPD's internal affairs sergeant, and after an investigation Quon and the other officer were allegedly disciplined. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「City of Ontario v. Quon」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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