WASHINGTON – In its first ruling on the privacy of workplace texting, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday said that a city audit of an employee’s messages on a city-owned pager was a reasonable search under the Fourth Amendment.

The unanimous ruling in City of Ontario, California v. Quon, 08-1332, sidestepped whether police Sergeant Jeff Quon, the employee in the case, had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his text messages, some of which turned out to be private and sexually explicit.