This is the first Mon­day in Octo­ber. In the shadow of the upcom­ing elec­tion, the Supreme Court of the United States opens its 2012–2013 term today. Think we had a busy and momen­tous term last year? It gets bigger.

This term, there are cases deal­ing with worker’s rights, vot­ing rights, mar­riage rights, the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, affir­ma­tive action, the rights of non-​​citizens, the right of habeus cor­pus, and more.

As one might expect, the bulk of the arti­cles here at Log­a­rchism over the next month will con­cen­trate on the elec­tion. Even so, the rest of the world con­tin­ues to turn. The Supreme Court of the United States con­tin­ues to address issues that affect us all. In today’s arti­cle, I’ll give a pre­view of just a few of the upcom­ing cases. As we did last year, we’ll be look­ing at many of them in more depth in the com­ing months. Here is a taste to whet your appetite.

Vance v. Ball State Uni­ver­sity explores the lim­its of when employ­ers can be held liable for harass­ment of an employee by a super­vi­sor. Is the employer respon­si­ble when that super­vi­sor has “author­ity to direct and over­see their victim’s daily work”? Or is the employer liable when “those harassers … have the power to ‘hire, fire, demote, pro­mote, trans­fer, or dis­ci­pline’ their vic­tim?” In other words, does it take the abil­ity to threaten ter­mi­na­tion or other ret­ri­bu­tion against the employee in order to imply abuse of power? Or is it enough to sim­ply be in a posi­tion of author­ity, direct­ing every­day work? This case has impli­ca­tions for the lim­its of an employer’s respon­si­bil­ity, and for the abil­ity of a harass­ment vic­tim to obtain recompense.

Kio­bel v Royal Dutch Petro­leum is to be argued today. The suit was brought on behalf of the late Dr. Barinem Kio­bel — an out­spo­ken Ogoni leader — and eleven other Nige­ri­ans from the Ogoni area of the Niger Delta. They sought dam­ages and other relief for crimes against human­ity, includ­ing tor­ture and extra­ju­di­cial exe­cu­tions com­mit­ted against the Ogoni peo­ple with the assis­tance and com­plic­ity of Royal Dutch Petro­leum between 1992 and 1995. Mem­bers of the Ogoni peo­ple protested the effects of oil drilling in their ancient lands, and var­i­ous of their lead­ers, includ­ing Dr Kio­bel, were arrested, tor­tured, and died in cus­tody. The case is being brought under the United States’ Alien Tort Statute, which states that “dis­trict courts shall have orig­i­nal juris­dic­tion of any civil action by an alien” which is “com­mit­ted in vio­la­tion of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” This case will deter­mine whether US courts can con­sider human rights abuses com­mit­ted out­side of the juris­dic­tion of the United States when nei­ther the victim(s) nor the perpetrator(s) are U.S. citizens.

Two related cases — Georgia-​​Pacific West, Inc. v. North­west Envi­ron­men­tal Defense Cen­ter and Decker v. North­west Envi­ron­men­tal Defense Cen­ter — will deter­mine whether the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency can (or per­haps even must) reg­u­late pol­lu­tants run­ning off of log­ging roads as if they are indus­trial waste, or whether log­ging com­pa­nies can allow such runoff with­out requir­ing a per­mit. The case will address who has stand­ing to bring such a suit, and under what con­di­tions, and in what venue. This has impli­ca­tions for the reach of the EPA, and may affect future areas of EPA power and regulation.

Gen­e­sis Health­Care Corp. v. Sym­czyk will address whether a plain­tiff in a poten­tial class action suit can escape respon­si­bil­ity to the wronged class by offer­ing to set­tle the suit with the spe­cific peo­ple named in the suit. In this case, Gen­e­sis Health­Care auto­mat­i­cally deducted pay for lunch breaks from employ­ees whether they took a lunch break or not. Employee Laura Sym­czyk brought suit to be reim­bursed for back pay. Clearly, other employ­ees could also poten­tially sue. Gen­e­sis Health­Care made Sym­czyk a set­tle­ment offer, which she rejected. Gen­e­sis then claimed that since they’d made an offer to the only per­son who had so far sued them, they should be held no longer liable to any other poten­tial mem­bers of the class they’d wronged. The Supreme Court will have to decide whether an offer made to the orig­i­nal per­son to bring suit makes any other law­suits moot.

Fisher v. Uni­ver­sity of Texas will tell us how far the Supreme Court will go to weaken affir­ma­tive action pro­grams in edu­ca­tion. Under the Texas Top Ten Per­cent Plan, any stu­dents in the top ten per­cent of their high school class, by grade-​​point aver­age, was given auto­matic admis­sion to any state pub­lic uni­ver­sity. Any­one who didn’t make the top ten per­cent would be con­sid­ered using a vari­ety of fac­tors that included aca­d­e­mic per­for­mance, per­sonal achieve­ment, and “spe­cial cir­cum­stances” — such things as socioe­co­nomic sta­tus, fam­ily respon­si­bil­i­ties, test scores rel­a­tive to class­mates, and race. Abi­gail Fisher was not accepted at the Uni­ver­sity of Texas in 2008, and she filed suit, argu­ing that con­sid­er­ing race as part of the admis­sion process was a vio­la­tion of her con­sti­tu­tional rights. In other words, Court is being asked whether there is a need for affir­ma­tive action pro­grams to pro­tect minor­ity rights. This case will be argued before the Court on Octo­ber 10.

Hollingsworth v. Perry and a col­lec­tion of suits relat­ing to the Defense of Mar­riage Act (DOMA) may decide whether it is con­sti­tu­tional to deny same-​​sex cou­ples the right to marry. Each of the related suits looks at the ques­tion is a slightly dif­fer­ent way, and it would take a major arti­cle to con­sider all the ques­tions involved. As of this writ­ing, the Court has not announced which of the pend­ing cases it will hear. But as one exam­ple of the issues involved — Hollingsworth v. Perry con­sid­ers the sit­u­a­tion in Cal­i­for­nia. The Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court ruled that the state of Cal­i­for­nia could not bar same-​​sex cou­ples from mar­ry­ing. Anti-​​marriage-​​rights groups spon­sored a bal­lot ques­tion, Propo­si­tion 8, to amend the state Con­sti­tu­tion to pre­vent same-​​sex mar­riages. The amend­ment passed. LGBT cou­ples in Cal­i­for­nia brought suit, alleg­ing that the right, once granted, could not be revoked, par­tic­u­larly for cou­ples who were mar­ried dur­ing the period in which such mar­riages were allowed. If the Court hears the case, they will not be asked whether same-​​sex mar­riages are a Con­sti­tu­tional right, but whether the Cal­i­for­nia cou­ples can retroac­tively have their right to be mar­ried revoked.

A pair of vot­ing rights cases — Nix v. Holder and Shelby County v. Holder — may be fast-​​tracked to be decided in the next few weeks, before the Novem­ber elec­tion. Both of these cases ask the Supreme Court to strike down or limit Sec­tion 5 of the Vot­ing Rights Act of 1965, which requires the Jus­tice Depart­ment to give approval to changes in vot­ing pro­ce­dures in a num­ber of states with a con­firmed his­tory of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in enforc­ing vot­ing rights. The cases were brought when the Attor­ney Gen­eral of the United States refused to allow changes in var­i­ous vot­ing laws to go into effect in North Car­olina and Geor­gia. These cases could be a water­shed moment in U.S. civil rights and vot­ing rights, and could reveal how far the Roberts Court will go in lim­it­ing the Vot­ing Rights Act.

Mon­crieffe v. Holder is a case deal­ing with rights of non-​​citizens, and addresses the aggres­sive­ness with which the Obama Administration’s Attor­ney Gen­eral has pur­sued depor­ta­tion for non-​​citizens who have vio­lated state or fed­eral laws. Accord­ing to the Immi­gra­tion and Nation­al­ity Act, a non-​​citizen “who is con­victed of an aggra­vated felony at any time after admis­sion is deportable.” Vio­lat­ing a state law may be con­sid­ered an “aggra­vated felony” if it is the equiv­a­lent of a “felony pun­ish­able under the Con­trolled Sub­stances Act” (CSA). Under that Act, it is a felony to pos­sess “less than 50 kilo­grams of mar­i­huana” with the intent to dis­trib­ute, except that a per­son whose offense involves “dis­trib­ut­ing a small amount of mar­i­huana for no remu­ner­a­tion” com­mits only a mis­de­meanor. The Court will address whether the non-citizen’s con­vic­tion under a broader state law, which includes con­duct that would not be a felony under the CSA, nec­es­sar­ily rises to the level of a felony under the CSA. Does a felony under a state law, which is not a felony under the CSA, require a non-​​citizen to be deported?

This month, the Supreme Court will con­sider no fewer than three cases involv­ing the right of habeus cor­pus, that is, the right of some­one who is detained to know the rea­son for being detained, and to chal­lenge the deten­tion. In essence, the right of habeus cor­pus pre­vents the gov­ern­ment from hold­ing a pris­oner with­out a legit­i­mate charge. John­son v. Williams, Tib­bals v. Carter, and Ryan v. Gon­za­les all address aspects of this right. The first of the three asks whether a defendant’s Sixth Amend­ment “right to a speedy and pub­lic trial, by an impar­tial jury” is vio­lated by remov­ing a biased juror from a dead­locked jury; and, if so, whether a later appeal to Fed­eral court can reverse that removal. The other two cases, which will be heard on the same day, ask whether a defen­dant who is found incom­pe­tent to stand trial in a cap­i­tal case should be deemed able to assist in his or her own defense at a habeus hear­ing. In other words, if some­one is deemed unable to defend them­selves in court by rea­son of insan­ity or other men­tal defi­ciency, is that per­son com­pe­tent to deal with the court sys­tem and the rea­sons for incar­cer­a­tion at all? These three cases may rede­fine how Amer­ica deals with one of the most basic rights in our judi­cial system.

The cases described above are only a sam­pling of some of the issues to be addressed in the 2012–2013 term of the Supreme Court. The bal­lot box is not the only place where deci­sions will be made affect­ing the direc­tion of our national course. Watch this space, and join in the discussion.

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