Supreme Court's new term brings potential for major rulings

The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, Monday, Oct. 1, 2012. The Supreme Court's new term could potentially include major rulings about affirmative action, gay marriage and voting rights.

Every year, the first Monday in October marks the beginning of a new term for the Supreme Court of the United States.

According to USA TODAY, the term that begins today will likely not be as monumental as the previous term, at the end of which the Supreme Court made the decision to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Still, the court will not be in for an easy ride, as the loaded issues of education, race and sex are likely to surface.

Affirmative action will be called into question with the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, which will appear before the Supreme Court on Oct. 10. The case challenges UT’s supplementation of the “Top Ten Percent Rule” that admits all Texas students in the top 10% of their high school classes with a holistic, “whole-view” review that takes race, among other factors, into account.

In response to Fisher v. University of Texas, the NAACP has stepped out in favor of affirmative action, citing African-American enrollment at UT to have grown by 21% when administrators added race to the criteria considered for enrollment in 2005.

Boston College junior Abraham Joya is an active member of BC’s Organization of Latin American Affairs (OLAA). In Joya’s experience, by looking at race, affirmative action does not always target the correct demographic of prospective students.

“As with most issues that turn political, affirmative action has become a proxy for a plethora of issues,” Joya said. “For one, affirmative action doesn’t necessarily benefit those who are actually in need, as in the poor kid from inner city neighborhoods, but rather the son of a lawyer who didn’t need help to begin with.”

Joya argues that if anything, accounting for race when considering an applicant perpetuates the categorization of ethnic groups.

“What does it show about our country, how are we to say that we are a nation where the law is impartial, when we have placed amongst the levers of our social capital something that inherently distinguishes between classes of citizenship?” he questioned.

The subject of race may also appear alongside challenges to Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which requires that certain states and municipalities obtain approval from the Justice Department or a special federal court before amending their voting laws.

Section 5 was put into place in response to the history of racially discriminatory election practices in specified regions, yet citizens who consider the provision to be outdated have challenged its constitutionality.

Under Section 5, the federal court prevented Texas from imposing voter ID laws, stating that doing so would place "strict unforgiving burdens on the poor," as reported by CNN. According to USA TODAY, such laws can also adversely affect the youth vote.

Same-sex marriage, a topic important to many college students, may also find its way into the Supreme Court’s line of sight, specifically in relation to either the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which prevents federal recognition of same-sex marriages, or Proposition 8, which overturned California’s legalization of same-sex marriage.

Bloomberg Businessweek reported modern college students are increasingly supportive of same-sex marriage. A 2011 University of California - Los Angeles survey of college freshmen indicated that 71% of students surveyed believed that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, up from 64.9% two years prior.

In addition, The New York Times reported that the majority of college towns and cities voted against Amendment 1 in North Carolina, which ultimately banned same-sex marriage in the state.

According to The New Yorker, the Supreme Court is more likely to take on DOMA than Proposition 8, as allowing federal recognition of same-sex marriages would only affect states that have already legalized same-sex marriage.

Jenna LaConte is a Fall 2012 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about her here.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.