WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court justices will face tough choices and political potshots from both left and right when they reclaim their seats today.
Over the next nine months, they will be taking up cases on topics such as affirmative action, congressional redistricting and public service unions. And though Republican presidential candidates have been lashing the court's GOP-appointed chief justice, conservatives still hold the upper hand.
"This term, I would expect a return to the norm in which the right side of the court wins a majority of cases," said Irv Gornstein, executive director of the Supreme Court Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center.
California teacher Harlan Elrich hopes so; at least, in part.
Elrich, 52, teaches math at Sanger High School near Fresno in the state's San Joaquin Valley. Unhappy with paying fees to an affiliate of the California Teachers Association even though he is not a member, Elrich joined a lawsuit conceived by attorney Terry Pell and the Center for Individual Rights.
Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association is one of the most closely watched cases of the 50 or so currently pending on the court's 2015-16 argument calendar. If Pell, Elrich and their allies win, public service unions like those representing teachers and municipal workers could lose their ability to compel nonunion members to pay agency fees.
"I'm not saying we need to get rid of unions; far from it," Elrich said in an interview. "I'm saying we should have a choice. A lot of money is being taken from me to support bills and candidates I don't support."
The dissident teachers are directly challenging a 1997 Supreme Court decision that allowed compulsory fees to pay for employee-support activities like collective bargaining. If the mandatory fees are struck down or made harder to collect by requiring workers to affirmatively agree to pay them, unions will take a hit.
"This case has a real potential to be a watershed in labor law," said attorney John Elwood, a frequent advocate before the high court.
A different kind of watershed, with even more explicit political consequences, could arise in a legislative redistricting case from Texas.
The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, follows up on the court's one man, one vote doctrine that's supposed to equalize voting power across state legislative and congressional districts. Broadly speaking, this has meant district populations are roughly equivalent. The question now is what "population" means.
Texas residents Sue Evenwel of Titus County and Edward Pfenninger of Montgomery County, and other challengers, want the Supreme Court to require states to draw districts based on the population of eligible voters. Texas and some other states use the total population, which includes immigrants, children and felons.
"The distinction didn't matter so much in the 1960s when the number of immigrant residents was low," noted Gail Heriot, a professor at the University of San Diego Law School. "It matters a great deal now in Texas and many other states."
In particular, Tennessee legislators argued in an amicus brief, "the use of total population alone in redistricting over-weights the votes from urban areas to the detriment of those from rural areas."
Conservative groups have lined up amicus briefs challenging how Texas handles redistricting, leaving the Southern state in the uncharacteristic position of defending what can be cast as the liberal position.
On affirmative action, too, Texas is back at the Supreme Court to defend the state flagship university's use of race as a factor in admissions. The case is still called Fisher v. University of Texas, reflecting the legal battle begun in 2008 by Abigail Noel Fisher after her rejection by the university.
The return fight, and the replacement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor by the stricter conservative Samuel Alito Jr., leaves in some doubt the future of racial considerations in college admissions, experts said.
"I think it's a very tough case for the university," acknowledged Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general in the Obama administration.
The cases granted so far amount to about two-thirds of the 75 or so typically heard by the Supreme Court during the term, which runs through June 30. Several issues, including abortion access and religious exceptions to the mandates of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, could yet arise in cases from lower courts.
A Section on 10/05/2015