Court rules in pregnancy bias case, takes up SOX Act constitutional challenge
In one of the last opinions to be authored by Justice David Souter, the Supreme Court held today that an employer does not violate the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act when, in calculating retirement benefits, it fails to award full credit for pregnancy leave taken before the effective date of the Act. The ruling came in the case AT&T Corp. v. Hulteen.
Also the Court ruled today in Ashcroft v. Iqbal that a complaint filed by a post-Sept. 11 detainee alleging Bush administration detention policies violated his First and Fifth Amendment rights did not plead sufficient facts to state a claim under the Rule 8 standard set in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly.
The Court also added four cases to next term’s docket, including Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOBI, which will test the constitutionality of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and Black v. U.S., a review of the mail fraud conviction of former newspaper magnate Conrad Black. The Court will consider whether his conviction should be reversed because the jury was not instructed that they had to find that Black’s fraudulent scheme “reasonably contemplated identifiable economic harm” to the company.
