New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear an appeal from Bob McDonnell, the former governor of Virginia who was convicted of public corruption and faces two years in prison in a case that offers an important test of what kinds of official conduct amount to forbidden corruption.

The Supreme Court took no action in a second case, United States v. Texas, No. 15-674, in which the Obama administration asked the court to revive a sweeping immigration program blocked by lower courts. The Supreme Court is most likely to announce next week whether it will hear the case.

Mr. McDonnell, a Republican, was prosecuted on charges that he had used his office to help a businessman, Jonnie R. Williams Sr., who had showered the governor and his wife with luxury products, loans and vacations. The gifts themselves were legal, and the question in the case was whether they were part of a corrupt bargain in which Mr. McDonnell reciprocated by using the power of his office to help Mr. Williams.

Mr. McDonnell arranged meetings for and attended events with his benefactor. But Mr. Williams, whose company made a diet supplement, met with no real success in obtaining support for his product from the state. A jury found that Mr. McDonnell’s actions amounted to corruption, and a federal appeals court upheld the conviction.

In August, the Supreme Court allowed Mr. McDonnell to stay out of prison while the court considered whether to hear his case, McDonnell v. United States, No. 15-474. That unusual order was a powerful hint that the court was interested in the issues presented in the appeal.

In urging the Supreme Court to hear his appeal, Mr. McDonnell’s lawyers said he had done no more than extend “routine political courtesies” to Mr. Williams. “This is the first time in our history that a public official has been convicted of corruption despite never agreeing to put a thumb on the scales of any government decision,” the brief said.

The appeals court’s decision, the brief added, “criminalizes ordinary politics, turning nearly every elected official into a felon.”

The brief noted that in the Citizens United decision in 2010, the Supreme Court said that “ingratiation and access” are “not corruption.” That same year, the court ruled in favor of a former Enron executive, Jeffrey K. Skilling, saying that a federal anti-corruption law governing “honest services” applied only to bribes and kickbacks.

In urging the Supreme Court not to hear the case, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said the prosecution was unexceptional. “A public official violates federal corruption statutes where, as here, he accepts personal benefits in exchange for his agreement to influence government matters,” Mr. Verrilli wrote, adding that “the failure of a bribery scheme does not make it lawful.”

The case was one of eight that the court added to its docket.

In another, the latest in a series of religious liberty cases, the justices agreed to decide whether officials in Missouri were entitled to reject an application from a Lutheran church for a grant to use recycled tires to resurface a playground.

The Missouri Constitution bars spending public money “in aid of any church,” and the state Supreme Court has called for “a very high wall between church and state.”

In urging the United States Supreme Court to hear the case, Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley, No. 15-577, the church’s lawyers said that the federal Constitution did not allow the government to “specifically exclude religious groups from neutral programs” without an exceptionally good reason.

The church, they said, sought only to protect children of all faiths from injury and could not use the rubber in its religious work.