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 military deployment in Iraq too ill to patrol, in a lawsuit that could determine whether federal protections for service 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 importance that affects 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 Department 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.
