In May 2006, Lisa Madigan, attorney general of Illinois, fired Harvey Levin from her consumer protection division. Levin was 55 and says he was replaced by a lawyer in her 30s. He sued under both the ADEA and the Equal Protection Clause.

The Equal Protection claim is important for two reasons. First, Levin’s ADEA claim was thrown out of court because the act doesn’t protect personal staff or legal advisers of elected officials, and a federal court found that he was one. Second, even if he could proceed under the ADEA, he couldn’t win a judgment for his back pay. The Eleventh Amendment bars an ADEA action for money damages against a state. That restriction doesn’t apply, however, to a lawsuit under the Equal Protection Clause.

So the question is whether Congress intended to make ADEA the only way employees could sue for age discrimination. The Seventh Circuit held that it did not; all other circuits that have ruled on the issue have held that it did. In practical terms, the resolution will matter to thousands of state employees. It will also give another glimpse of the Court’s attitude toward civil rights and discrimination plaintiffs generally. Thus far, that attitude has been fairly grudging. (The latest cutbacks on sex-discrimination suits afforded minor fireworks at the end of last term, when Justice Samuel Alito now famously pulled a face during Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s reading from the bench of her dissent in one such case.)

A group of law professors has filed an amicus brief arguing that the Seventh Circuit improperly considered the constitutional-remedy issue. The Court could dismiss the case on those grounds, curing the circuit split by vacating the decision below but not resolving the issue. It may, however, prefer to settle it.

Tuesday, October 8—McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission offers the Court majority a chance to open a new front in its war on campaign-finance regulation. The Roberts Court has decided two major cases on this issue in the past three years—Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and Arizona Freedom Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Arizona. Those cases struck down state and federal efforts to reduce expenditures—that is, the amount of money that independent groups and candidates can spend to get their political message out. But until now, the Court has left alone most restrictions on contributions (money given by individuals and groups directly to candidates or political parties). Contributions, the Court has said, raise the specter of undue influence—“corruption or its appearance”—and thus can be limited as long as the limits aren’t so low they prevent challengers from “mounting an effective campaign.”

However, the conservative majority hates the idea of limits on money in politics, and three of its members—Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas—have written that the First Amendment protects the right to give money directly to candidates as strongly as it does the right to speak publicly about politics.