City of Ontario

This assignment will assess Competency 7: Relate regulations in employment law to different employment relationships.

In this lesson plan you read City of Ontario v. Quon. Provide a brief description of the facts of the case. Identify the legal issues of the case. Explain the rule that was created by the decision of the court.

Both courts agreed that Quon did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the text messages, despite the fact that his boss told him that the messages would be private if he paid the overages. What statements or acts by an employee, in your opinion, would be necessary to create an expectation of privacy in the messages? Where is the line drawn? In your opinion, would this case have been decided differently if it had involved an employer-supplied communication device other than a pager? If so, how?

The Court decided the case on narrow grounds, purposefully stopping short of pronouncing broadly applicable rules for electronic communications. If they had taken on the task of a broadly applicable rule, what, in your opinion, should they have said?

Your brief should be one to two pages in length and follow these guidelines:

• Double-spaced
• 12-point Times font
• One inch margins
• APA format (Title page, Citations, Reference page, and quotes over three lines do not count towards the minimum page limit)
• Correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation