The City of Ontario in California decided to review text messages Jeff Quon sent and received. Quon, a police sergeant and member of the city's SWAT team, had complied with the city's policy requiring payment for overages (e.g., transmissions that went beyond the city's allotted 25,000 characters per pager per month and charging officers for characters beyond the allotted number). Quon went over the monthly character limit three or four times, and Quon paid the city for the overages. The city grew weary of collecting for the overages and asked Arch Wireless, the company that provided text-messaging services to the city, to provide transcripts so the city could determine whether the character allotment should be changed. (If the text messages were all work related, the city would increase the allotment, but if the text messages included personal messages, the city would continue to charge officers for overages.)
Upon review of the transcripts, the city realized that several of Quon's messages were sexually explicit messages sent to his wife. Quon, his wife, and other employees sued the city and Arch Wireless, asserting that their privacy had been violated.
Did Arch Wireless violate privacy laws by providing transcripts to the city? Did employees have an expectation of privacy in their messages?