The Supreme Court Returns To Work Next Week (Be Afraid)

Next week marks the Supreme Court’s first conference after the Court adjourned last June. The next week marks the formal beginning of its 2014-2015 term. Much of the drama that will unfold in this coming term, however, is likely to come from cases the justices have yet to agree to hear. Marriage equality, abortion and birth control are all fairly likely to wind up on the Court’s docket before the justices go back on vacation next June. In the meantime, however, the justices will consider the rights of pregnant women who face discrimination in the workplace, they will weigh the Voting Right Act for the first time since they gutted much of this law in 2013, they will thrust themselves into the delicate foreign policy problems raised by the tensions in Israel and Palestine, and they will examine when the First Amendment protects people who make violent threats online.

Here are six major cases the justices will consider this term, as well as a short list of issues they stand a good chance of taking up before the term is over:

Pregnancy Discrimination

Peggy Young was tasked with lifting boxes as heavy as 70 pounds in her job as a United Postal Service worker. When she got pregnant, her midwife recommended that she not lift more than 20 pounds, and wrote a note asking her employer to put her on light duty. Had Young been written a similar note because Young broke her arm carrying boxes, or suffered from a disability, UPS would have put her on what is known as “light duty.” But UPS wouldn’t do it for Young on account of her pregnancy.

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Racial Gerrymandering

When the state of Alabama redrew its legislative districts in 2012, it applied a method one judge described as “naked ‘racial quotas.’” In each district where African Americans were in the majority under the previous maps, according to testimony from one of the legislative leaders involved in the redistricting process, the legislature tried to “at least maintain” or “increase” the percentage of black voters under the new maps. The result was that black voters were packed into relatively few districts, many of which had black supermajorities, rather than having some of those voters be spread into other districts where they could potentially swing the outcome of an election away from the candidate preferred by most whites. In a state where voters are largely polarized on the basis of race — in 2008, 98 percent of African Americans voted for Obama and 88 percent of whites voted for McCain — a racial redistricting scheme that reduces minority voting power also benefits Republicans over Democrats.

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When What You Say On Facebook Lands You In Jail

It’s always been difficult to assess when one person is truly threatening another. But it’s especially difficult on the Internet and social media. If someone tells us they’ll kill us, we may take them at their word out of fear. But what if a similar threat is broadcast to a much broader audience, on social media? Is the threat directed at that person, or is it a form of expression or therapy, directed at a much broader, now-readily available audience? That question has big implications, and it is at the center of the case that is likely the most prominent to assess how we view constitutional principles like free speech in light of evolving cultural and technological norms. In Elonis v. United States, plaintiff Anthony Elonis made some seriously violent comments on Facebook about his wife, who left him and took their children. He said in one status post, “There’s one way to love you but a thousand ways to kill you. I’m not going to rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts. Hurry up and die, bitch, so I can bust this nut all over your corpse from atop your shallow grave. I used to be a nice guy but then you became a slut. Guess it’s not your fault you liked your daddy raped you. So hurry up and die, bitch, so I can forgive you.”

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Religious Liberty in Prison
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Israel and Palestine
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When Cops Stop You By Mistake
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http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/09/23/3569923/what-to-expect-when-the-supreme-court-returns-to-work-next-week/