Supreme Court hints it may take case of fired state employees

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has asked the U.S. solicitor general to weigh in on the case of a Texas state trooper who was fired from his job after he came home from a militar y deployment in Iraq too ill to patrol, in a lawsuit that could determine whether federal protections for ser vice members apply to state employees.

The orders to the solicitor general, which posted on the Supreme Court’s website on Monday morning, “means they [justices] believe the case has national impor tance that af fects the interest of the United States,” said Andrew Tutt, an attorney with Arnold & Porter, which was one of the firms petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.

The case of Leroy Torres v. The Texas Depar tment of Public Safety involves a 14-year Texas state trooper who deployed to Balad, Iraq, in 2007 as an Army reservist. Torres says he spent a year there inhaling toxic air from the base’s massive open-air trash burning pits.

When Torres returned home from Iraq, his respirator y condition had prevented him from ser ving on the road as a state trooper, the Texas attorney general’s of fice had said in its filing to the Supreme Court. Torres now requires supplemental oxygen and said he requested, but was not provided, an alternative desk job, and was forced to resign in 2012.