Friday round-up

By Kiera Flynn
on Jul 29, 2011 at 11:14 am

As Kiran noted in yesterday’s round-up, on Wednesday the Thomas More Law Center filed a petition seeking review of the Sixth Circuit’s decision upholding the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Lyle Denniston has more on the petition itself here, while Steven Schwinn briefly summarizes the petition’s main points at the Constitutional Law Prof Blog.  Adam Liptak at the New York Times, Debra Cassens Weiss at the ABA Journal, the Wall Street Journal Blog, and Peter J. Reilly at Forbes have additional coverage.

In 2009, in Ricci v. DeStefano, the Court held that city officials in New Haven, Connecticut, had violated the rights of a group of white firefighters when they threw out the results of promotion tests because not enough minority applicants were eligible for promotion.   The case recently settled, with the firefighters set to receive approximately two million dollars in damages.  The Associated Press (via the New York Times), Los Angeles Times, NPR’s The Two-Way Blog, Fox New York, Business Insurance have coverage of the settlement.

Briefly:

• At Concurring Opinions, Danielle Citron summarizes the facts in one of next Term’s merits cases, Hosanna Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC.   At issue in the case is the scope of the “ministerial exception,” which provides religious organizations with immunity from employment discrimination suits brought by “ministerial” employees.
• At PrawfsBlawg, Allen Erbsen analyzes the Court’s recent decision in Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, holding that two foreign subsidiaries of Goodyear could not be sued in North Carolina for claims unrelated to any activity by them in that state.  He concludes that although Goodyear may require some clarification, it “might not be imminent.”