• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, September 1, 2011

Last week, a judge nixed a law in Missouri that would have imposed sweeping new restrictions on how teachers could use Facebook and other social networking sites.

But that didn't stop judges in Delaware County, Indiana from issuing a new social media policy with stunningly broad limits on court employees' rights to communicate online.

How broad? The policy, issued this week, prohibits all court employees from making any posts about anything related to their jobs. Here's the language: "As a condition of employment, each court employee agrees to complete confidentiality of the workplace... Therefore, even outside the workplace, no employee shall discuss or reveal on a social network any information related to a judge, co-worker, parties before the court, attorneys who appear before the court, local law enforcement officials, and/or any information obtained through the employee's observation of and/or work with the court."

And that's not all. The new policy also warns employees against revealing that they don't "maintain a prudent and judicious lifestyle." Specifically, the document prohibits personnel from posting photos of any employees in an "intoxicated condition." The reason that's improper, according to the judges, is "because the court regularly hears cases involving alcohol abuse offenses." (Whether intoxication can be determined from a photo is another question.)

If enforced, this policy obviously would prevent a lot of people from airing information about matters of public importance. The policy, along with the confidentiality requirement, could almost certainly be challenged as unconstitutional, should any employees be so inclined.

Meantime, these types of restrictions offer one more reason why -- with all due respect to Google -- pseudonyms can be useful on social networking sites.