In a decision likely to increase the pressure on President Barack Obama to appoint a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices ruled on Monday that employers may give less credit for long-ago pregnancy leave than for other medical leave in calculating pension benefits.
Also on Monday, the high court agreed to hear a case testing the constitutionality of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act provision creating the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and to consider newspaper magnate Conrad Black’s challenge to his 2007 fraud conviction. The Court sent back to the lower courts a case testing whether former Attorney General John Ashcroft and current FBI Director Robert Mueller III can be held personally liable for the policies that led to mistreatment of aliens rounded up after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
