Can your group chat get subpoenaed? There are certain things in this world that we all expect to be able to keep private, and the contents of one’s group chat definitely falls under that category. But thanks to a certain high-profile workplace lawsuit happening right now, you may be wondering if that coworker’s group chat you have going is as safe as you thought.
In January, Justin Baldoni’s private group texts were released to the public as part of the discovery process in his legal battle with Blake Lively. Similarly, Lively’s personal messages to Taylor Swift and Baldoni’s publicist’s messages to Jameela Jamil were also publicized as part of discovery. It’s likely that none of the parties involved ever imagined that their private conversations would one day become public record—especially since this is a workplace dispute and none of these chats were happening on work platforms.
It’s fair to wonder if your own group chats are vulnerable even if you keep it off of Slack, Teams, or your work emails. Could a lawsuit force you to turn over a private chat? And if so, who’s going to see it and how much trouble could it cause you? Let’s get into it.
Glamour spoke with Alex Granovsky, an employment law lawyer at Granovsky & Sundaresh PLLC, who tells us when you should worry about a subpoena, and when to just live your life.
Can your work group chat be subpoenaed?
Short answer? Yes. But in the same way anything could be subpoenaed if there’s a lawsuit involved.
“Your private texts are discoverable,” Granovsky tells Glamour. “Meaning, they can be obtained by the other side and reviewed to the extent they’re necessary.” In a legal context, discovery is the process by which all the parties gather the information they need ahead of the trial.
Granovsky explains that whatever is relevant to the case—be that a group chat, an email chain, or anything else—is discoverable. So, in Baldoni and Lively’s case, any of their personal texts that were deemed relevant to the dispute could be used in discovery.
“If [Lively] had texts with Taylor Swift that are somehow relevant to her dispute, the fact that it was on their private cell phone lines and not on Paramount or Warner Brothers or whatever employer they’re working for when you make a movie—that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t affect whether it’s relevant and relevance is the linchpin of whether or not something is discoverable,” Granovsky says.
When can your boss see your messages without getting the law involved?
Outside of a lawsuit, your employer doesn’t have a right to go snooping around your private texts, but Granovsky emphasizes that you should assume that they can see anything that goes on at work. “Anything and everything that you do within your employer’s ecosystem, you should have no expectation of privacy,” Granovsky says. “By ecosystem, I mean on their devices, on your me@employer.com email address, on their wifi, through their Slack. Anything where you’re in your employer’s ecosystem, you should assume that they can see it.”
On your personal devices, however, your boss doesn’t have a right to check your group chat unless it is part of legal discovery.
When might your group chat be subpoenaed?
You might assume that the chances your private texts are turned over to discovery in a lawsuit are slim, and you’d probably be right. But, at the same time, they’re not as slim as you’re probably thinking. “There’s a lot of ways in which one’s private communications can be relevant,” Granovsky says.
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