Justices’ new term has expectations on gay unions

WASHINGTON — A Supreme Court term that is starting with a lack of headline-grabbing cases may end with a blockbuster that helps define the legacy of the court under Chief Justice John Roberts.

While same-sex marriage is not yet on their agenda, the justices appear likely to take on the issue and decide once and for all whether gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to marry.

When the justices formally open their new term Monday, Roberts will be beginning his 10th year at the head of the court, and the fifth with the same lineup of justices. He has been part of a five-justice conservative majority that has rolled back campaign finance limits, upheld abortion restrictions and generally been skeptical of the consideration of race in public life.

But his court has taken a different path in cases involving gay and lesbian Americans, despite his opposition most of the time.

The court’s record on gay rights is comparable to its embrace of civil rights for African-Americans in the 1950s and 1960s under Chief Justice Earl Warren, said University of Chicago law professor David Strauss. “The court will go down in history as one that was on the frontiers of establishing rights for gays and lesbians,” Strauss said.

The justices passed up their first opportunity last week to add gay marriage cases to their calendar. But they will have several more chances in the coming weeks to accept appeals from officials in Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin who are trying to preserve their state bans on same-sex marriage.

Those prohibitions fell one after the other following the high court’s June 2013 decision that struck down part of a federal law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

On the court’s plate in the new term are cases involving:

—religious, employment and housing discrimination.

—the drawing of political districts in Alabama and Arizona.

—a dispute between Congress and the president over passports that is heavy with Middle East politics.

—a faulty traffic stop over a car’s broken brake light in North Carolina.

—the use of a law to prevent document shredding against a fisherman accused of throwing undersized red grouper overboard.

—the prosecution of a self-styled rapper whose Facebook postings threatened his estranged wife, an FBI agent and area schools.

Monday’s argument involves the North Carolina traffic stop that led to the discovery of cocaine in Nicholas Heien’s Ford Escort. A police officer pulled the car over when he saw the right brake light wasn’t working, although the left one was. Typically, evidence found in a car pulled over for a valid reason can be used against a defendant. But North Carolina’s quirky traffic laws mandate that only one brake light on a car be working.