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From WashingtonPost:

The Supreme Court begins a new term Monday with the most important civil rights agenda in years on the horizon and amid intensified scrutiny of the relationship between Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his fellow conservatives.

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The justices will consider the continued viability of affirmative action in college admissions when it hears a challenge next week to the University of Texas’s race-conscious selection process.

And there are several challenges awaiting the court’s action on the most controversial part of the Voting Rights Act — the Civil Rights-era requirement that some states with a history of racial discrimination receive federal approval before enacting voting or election-law changes.

The court seems all but certain to confront the issue of same-sex marriage by considering suits against the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act. The law’s provision denying federal recognition of same-sex marriages performed in states where they are legal has been deemed unconstitutional both by the Obama administration and lower courts that have considered it.

In addition, the court will be asked to review a decision that overturned California’s Proposition 8, in which voters amended the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

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