Upcoming SCOTUS Session Full of Hot Button Issues

News interns run to waiting reporters with the official Supreme Court decision
ending marriage discrimination. Photo: Ted Eytan | FlickrCC.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is getting ready to start a new and contentious session, which will run through June of next year, during which a number of cases will come before them, which could have important impacts on a number of rights.

SCOTUS could end up ruling on abortion laws in Texas that many have argued are about shutting down clinics, instead of protecting women’s health as their proponents claim.

They could also rule on Texas voting rights, where Republicans claim that urban Latinos have too much power because of the way the districts are drawn.

And, because Texas is a political hotbed, they could finally rule on affirmative action in universities, which conservatives would like to see struck down once and for all, but which liberals maintain ensures greater diversity in education and the workplace.

Other cases involve teachers’ unions in California, and could also involve President Obama’s executive actions shielding immigrants from deportation.

From the look of it, this next term will be politically divisive, as pretty much everything is a battle between conservatives and liberals.

In the last term, SCOTUS ruled that gay-marriage bans were unconstitutional, making same-sex marriage legal across the country, and they also struck down conservative attacks on the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare.

The last term ended with some wins for liberals, but moving forward, the conservative majorities in the Supreme Court suggest that the outlook might be better for conservatives.

Analysts maintain that these issues are less likely to swing Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has fallen on the liberal side of arguments recently, but is authentically conservative.

Of course, a string of conservative wins in the Court would make the Democrats seem like the underdogs in the upcoming presidential election, which will likely pay a lot of attention to SCOTUS.

There are a lot of important cases on the Court’s plate this term, and it’s up to them to choose the cases that they hear and when they will hear them, meaning that not all of these issues might be judged.