The Supreme Court begins a new term Monday with the most important civil rights agenda in years on the horizon and amid intensified scrutiny of the relationship between Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his fellow conservatives.
If last term's blockbuster cases involving immigration and
President Barack Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
centered on the reach of the federal government's powers, this term
offers a chance to cast the 21st-century meaning of the
Constitution's guarantee of equal rights.
A combination of cases asks the court to decide whether special
protections and accommodations for minorities have reached their
limit and whether society's growing acceptance of same-sex unions
warrants constitutional protection.
The justices will consider the continued viability of affirmative
action in college admissions when it hears a challenge next week to
the University of Texas's race-conscious selection process.
And there are several challenges awaiting the court's action on
the most controversial part of the Voting Rights Act - the Civil
Rights-era requirement that some states with a history of racial
discrimination receive federal approval before enacting voting or
election-law changes.
The court seems all but certain to confront the issue of same-
sex marriage by considering suits against the 1996 federal Defense
of Marriage Act.
The law's provision denying federal recognition of same-sex
marriages performed in states where they are legal has been deemed
unconstitutional both by the Obama administration and lower courts
that have considered it.
In addition, the court will be asked to review a decision that
overturned California's Proposition 8, in which voters amended the
state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.
A decision on whether to accept the gay rights cases is likely to
come in November.
The cases could keep the court in the same bright public
spotlight that shone on its deliberations last term.
This term opens with questions about the unity of the five
Republican-nominated justices who since 2006 have had a remarkable
impact on the court's jurisprudence: striking down campaign finance
regulations, approving federal restrictions on abortion and
expressing doubts about government programs that make distinctions
based on race.
"I think there's no question this Supreme Court is the most
conservative in our lifetime," said Georgetown law Professor Michael
Seidman.
"But there is a question about what kind of conservatives they
are," he added.
In the most important cases of the upcoming term, Justice Anthony
M. Kennedy is likely to resume his role as the pivotal justice.
But the greatest intrigue will surround Roberts, who, in the most
important case of his tenure, sided with the court's four liberals
in June to affirm the constitutionality of Obama's signature health
care act.
Kennedy and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel
A. Alito Jr. signed a 65-page dissent that described the decision as
"a vast judicial overreaching."
Roberts billed it as just the opposite, an exercise of judicial
modesty and deference to the political branches that requires "every
reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order to save a
statute from unconstitutionality."
Amid reports that Roberts had changed his mind and his
conservative colleagues were furious, the reaction from the right
was brutal.
"Privately, nobody thinks of Roberts the same way," said Curt
Levey, who heads the conservative legal group Committee for Justice.
Others say the Roberts' decision was surprising, but that the
reaction has been overblown.
"I don't think everything you knew about John Roberts is no
longer true," said Paul Clement, the former George W. Bush
administration solicitor general who argued the health care case for
the challengers.
"I think 99 percent of it still is."
