Upcoming Supreme Court Cases That Could Change History
October rolling around means the start of another Supreme Court term. It’s unlikely that this term will bring the kind of international attention as last term – when in its closing days the Court legalized same-sex marriage – but that doesn’t mean the Court won’t be dealing with important issues that touch on some of the most volatile political debates of the day.
Here’s a rundown of the big cases we’ll be hearing about between now and when the Court’s term ends in late June.
Affirmative action
Abigail Fisher originally sued the University of Texas in 2008 over the school’s affirmative action plan, which includes race as a factor – one of many – in determining admissions. Fisher, a white woman, contends that the program unconstitutionally discriminated against her because of her race, because she was denied admission to the school. After the university won in the lower courts, in 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that those courts had to more closely scrutinize the program to determine if there was a race-neutral way the school could have achieved its goal of educational diversity. Last year, a federal appeals court applied this rigorous standard, and once again found that the university could continue its program.
Apparently not pleased with that decision, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Fisher’s case one more time. Given the case’s history, as well as this Court’s general antipathy toward affirmative action, almost everyone expects the Court to strike down the university’s program – and possibly put a nail in the coffin of all public education affirmative action programs, even those that use race in the most minimal way possible to ensure some element of diversity on campus.
Voting
One of the Supreme Court’s most important decisions ever was 1964’s Reynolds v. Sims, which found that the Constitution requires “one person, one vote.” This means that legislative districts, both state and federal, must have roughly equal numbers of people in them, guaranteeing that legislatures don’t have lopsided representation favoring less populated areas, and that each person in a state’s vote counts roughly the same. Reynolds fundamentally re-shaped our country’s representative democracy in a more fair and equal way.
The Supreme Court has the opportunity to dramatically undercut Reynolds this term. In Evenwel v. Abbott, a Texas voter is claiming that the Reynolds system requires not a look at total population but rather total voting population. If total voters were the starting point, districts would be drastically re-drawn because in many urban, more liberal areas, there are large numbers of people who are not voters – such as children, undocumented immigrants and others who have been disenfranchised. If those non-voters don’t count, broadly speaking, urban representation goes down, and suburban and rural representation goes up. Accordingly, a ruling in favor of using total voting population would mean the re-drawing of districts across the country in a way that would mostly favor Republicans.
Union dues
In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled that public unions could collect dues from non-members for collective bargaining efforts, but not for political activity. The reasoning was that collective bargaining benefits all workers, so the non-union workers should pay for that; however, political activity raises free-speech issues, and non-union workers should not be forced to speak in a way they don’t want to.