Nearly half of U.S. states now have laws that prohibit employers from demanding access to employee social media accounts. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 20 states had implemented such restrictions as of July. All had passed their laws within the past three years.
The most recent state to implement such a law, Maine, offers a good example of what a comprehensive bill to protect employees' online privacy looks like.
To be clear, it doesn't mean that employers aren't free to browse the publicly-available content their employees or prospective hires post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the plethora of other online resources that tempt us to over-share.
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What it means is that employers can't subvert their employees' attempts to keep some of their social media activity private. There are a variety of protections states have put in place to that effect.
According to the National Law Review's recent analysis of the Maine law, bosses in the Pine Tree State can no longer force employees to hand over passwords. Nor can they force workers to "friend" them or add them as contacts to social networks so that they can monitor online activity. Finally, employers cannot demand that workers alter settings that keep their social media content private.
One caveat: Employers can request workers to disclose social media activity in connection with an investigation into employee misconduct. The statute specifies that the information requested must be "reasonably" believed to be relevant to the misconduct allegations and the information provided can only be used for the purposes of the investigation.
But unlike some similar state laws, Maine's statute does not enshrine an employee's right to bring suit over social media snooping by an employer. And the penalties don't appear very stiff. The first offense will result in a fine of "not less than $100." The second offense will cost the employer $250, and all subsequent offenses will bring a fine of no less than $500.
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