Van Alstyne v. Electronic Scriptorium, Fourth Circuit, No. 07-1892, March 18, 2009

Decision: Employer access of an employee's personal email communications sent over an outside (not an employer-owned) server is a violation of the Stored Communications Act.

An employee sued for sexual harassment. The owner of the company later accessed the employee's personal emails (sent through a private, password-protected email account) and tried to use them against her in the suit. After the employee found out about this, she also sued for violation of the Stored Communications Act.

The employer eventually admitted to having read over 200 of the employee's personal emails at all hours of the day, from home and from internet cafes, and from locations as diverse as London, Paris, and Hong Kong.

While the Stored Communications Act does not prohibit employers from reading email correspondence that an employee sends through the employer's server (company email, in most cases), it does prohibit employers from accessing employee's personal emails stored on an outside server (accounts on sites like Google, Yahoo, or Hotmail). The court ultimately ruled for the employee, noting that employer had violated the Stored Communications Act.

The Fourth Circuit covers the states of Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.