美国国家公共电台 NPR Abortion, Guns And Gay Rights On The Docket For Supreme Court's New Term（在线收听）

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

We have reached the first Monday in October. And that, among other things, means that the United States Supreme Court formally opens a new term. It is a very different place since 2018, with conservatives now holding a firm majority on the court. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.

NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: The upcoming Supreme Court term will likely be a march to the right on almost every issue that's a flashpoint in American society - abortion, guns, gay rights, the separation of church and state, immigration and presidential power. And that's just the beginning. Headed to the court are cases testing the power of Congress to get information from the executive branch that's relevant to congressional oversight - and potentially to impeachment.

Clearly, President Trump had something like that in mind when he had this to say about impeachment late in September.

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It shouldn't be allowed. There should be a way of stopping it, maybe legally through the courts.

TOTENBERG: With a newly energized conservative majority in place, Chief Justice John Roberts occasionally splits from fellow conservatives, as he did in upholding Obamacare in 2012 and in repudiating the citizenship question on the census seven years later. But usually, on the big issues, as Supreme Court advocate Tom Goldstein puts it...

TOM GOLDSTEIN: The chief justice does seem to be a solid conservative vote. The disagreement among the right in the Supreme Court has been about, how fast do you move?

TOTENBERG: The first place that disagreement could become apparent is on abortion in a case that asked the court to essentially reverse a 2016 decision that struck down a Texas law that threatened the very existence of most clinics that perform abortions. Goldstein, who's publisher of the leading Supreme Court blog, expects the court to eventually reverse Roe v. Wade outright or hollow it out over time.

GOLDSTEIN: It's coming, but nobody quite knows whether it's in one year, five years or maybe 10.

TOTENBERG: Also before the court is a gun case, the first major test of gun regulations in the 10 years since the justices ruled that there is a constitutional right to own a gun for self-defense in one's home. Court observers have long attributed the 10-year hiatus on gun cases to a closely divided court on which neither the four conservatives nor the four liberals were sure how Justice Kennedy would cast his deciding vote. But now Kennedy is retired, replaced by Justice Kavanaugh, who, on the lower court, was a critic of most gun regulations and a strong supporter of expansive gun rights.

Also before the court this term are major questions involving the separation of church and state. For generations, the court sought to erect a relatively high wall of separation, but that's begun to change. And religious rights advocates are poised to pounce. Mark Rienzi is president of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

MARK RIENZI: I actually can't recall a time in the last 20 years that there were this many key issues that seemed ready for decision and primed for decision.

TOTENBERG: In particular, Rienzi and others have set their sights on invalidating or undermining provisions in most state constitutions that bar direct or indirect aid to religious schools. Former Solicitor General Paul Clement.

PAUL CLEMENT: The mood music of the court is that they would probably say that that's just discrimination on the basis of religion and that's forbidden by the federal constitution.

TOTENBERG: Moving on to another hot-button issue, the court will hear a case that tests whether employers are free to fire gay employees because of their sexual orientation or transgender employees because of their gender identity. The 1964 Civil Rights Act bars discrimination in employment, quote, "because of sex." The fired employees contend that language protects them from such discharges. The employers argue that the law was never meant to cover gay or transgender employees.

Then, too, there are a variety of immigration cases, the biggest being the Trump administration's attempt to roll back the Obama administration program that currently protects from deportation some 700 to 800,000 so-called DREAMers brought to the U.S. by their parents when they were children without legal authorization. In short, the cases before the court are a legal Rorschach test if ever there was one.

Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.

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