This spring, the United States Supreme Court will hear the case of City of Ontario v. Quon, which questions whether the Fourth Amendment protects the privacy of text messages that a government employee sends by electronic device.
In 2001, the city of Ontario, California distributed pagers to a number of the employees in its police department. Jeff Quon, a member of the departments SWAT team, received one of the pagers. The city had no official policy governing…