Yesterday's New York Times welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court back for its Fall Term noting "Justices Return to Work, With Less Meaty Docket."  The Times notes two employment cases before the Court:

After ruling in May that workers are protected from retaliation under two federal civil rights laws that do not explicitly provide such protection, the court will hear arguments on Wednesday in Crawford v. Nashville and Davidson County, No. 06-1595, about whether a law that does prohibit retaliation applies to people who cooperate in internal investigations.

In AT&T v. Hulteen, No. 07-543, the court will consider whether failing to give credit for pregnancy leaves in pension calculations amounts to employment discrimination.

The Supreme Court will also turn to labor issues early, as it is expected to take up Locke v. Karass, No. 07-610, right away.  In Locke, the issue is whether under the First Amendment a union, functioning as the exclusive bargaining agent for certain state employees, may charge non-members for litigation expenses incurred by its national affiliate.  In this case, the MSEA/Local 1989 SEIU in Maine adopted a "pooling arrangement" of such monies to fund SEIU litigation elsewhere.

Another passage in the Times piece notes: 

Perhaps the most significant cases of the term involve pre-emption, a doctrine that can bar state-court lawsuits over products that met federal safety standards and one that has repeatedly occupied the Roberts court. The doctrine is in some tension with the Rehnquist court’s attentiveness to state’s rights, which had been known for a time as the “federalism revolution.”

“Corporate America has discovered that they would much rather be regulated by one government in Washington than by 50 state governments, or by the most aggressive of them,” said Kathleen M. Sullivan, a law professor at Stanford and a Supreme Court advocate.

This is certainly an area with significant impact in labor and employment law.  For more how this dynamic might play out, head over to the always excellent Workplace Prof Blog, for a "Cage Match" between labor and employment law professors Jeff Hirsch (for Federalism) and Paul Secunda (against Federalism).