In a potentially important victory for employee privacy, San Francisco's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came out with a big ruling limiting the ability of employers to obtain transcripts of employee e-mail and text messages. The ruling focused on electronic communications that are stored off-site by third-party services(as most text messages are) and e-mails maintained on external servers and found that the Ontario(Calif.) Police Department violated an officer's privacy by retrieving the content of his text messages without a warrant. But Thompson & Knight attorney David Furlow cautions that the case's impact may be limited, and more-conservative courts may choose to ignore the ruling. "Anyone using an employer's e-mail should still assume that his or her boss may read even the most private text or e-mail message," Furlow says.