Supreme Court Begins New Term as Health Care Law Looms

Updated: Monday, 03 Oct 2011, 4:46 AM MST
Published : Monday, 03 Oct 2011, 4:46 AM MST

(The Wall Street Journal) - The Supreme Court term that begins Monday was likely to be dominated by the challenge to the 2010 health care law, after the Obama administration asked the justices last week to uphold the measure's requirement that most individuals carry insurance.

While the justices are all but certain to hear the case, arguments are unlikely to be scheduled until next spring. Meanwhile, the high court docket already includes other important cases, including several that test the meaning of centuries-old constitutional protections in the rapidly-changing digital world.

Disputes over gay marriage, warrantless wiretaps and states' powers to pursue illegal immigrants are working their way through lower courts, each with a chance of making the high court docket in 2012.

On the immigration issue, Arizona and several other states have enacted tough laws intended to drive illegal immigrants from their borders. The Obama administration and some civil rights and business groups contend that the measures improperly conflict with federal laws.

The term is "shaping up to be quite significant and possibly even historic, based on what the court does with the health care cases," according to Gregory Garre, a former US solicitor general now with the firm Latham & Watkins. "But even looking at the cases already on the docket," the justices are poised to set important precedents, Garre added.

One prominent case to be decided this term involves the government's increasing ability to track where people go -- and when the Fourth Amendment requires authorities to get a warrant before doing so. Police said they are entitled to secretly attach a GPS tracking device to anyone's car for any reason, and, at arguments slated for Nov. 8, are set to ask the justices to reverse an appeals-court ruling that held otherwise.

Later in the term, the court will consider whether the government's expanded ban on broadcast indecency violates the First Amendment.

Under the George W. Bush administration, the Federal Communications Commission for the first time began punishing broadcasters for "fleeting expletives" or other momentary indecencies -- for instance, the utterance of a four-letter word on an awards program or a brief shot of a woman's backside on a TV show.

The Obama administration argues that broadcast media should remain a sanctuary where parents know their children will not be exposed to indecent material.

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