Major ruling on affirmative action awaits the Supreme Court

WASHINGTON -- In the coming months, the Supreme Court plans major rulings on affirmative action, gay sex and free speech, and may take on new fights over political fund raising, the Pledge of Allegiance and terrorism.

"Everyone assumes Rehnquist is going to retire," said New York University law professor Norman Dorsen. "They talk about it like it's a done deal," even though few, if any, observers really know for sure.

The high court returns to work Monday for the final session of oral arguments this term. The court's busiest season then begins, with nearly 40 rulings due before the justices take a summer break.

"The court has made steady progress through a bunch of critical and important cases, but the biggest barn-burners are still to come," said Tom Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who specializes in the Supreme Court.

A pair of cases about affirmative action in college admissions are the most anticipated questions before the court. The court's ruling will govern how or whether universities may consider an applicant's race, and will likely affect how the government treats race in other arenas.

In a second culturally divisive case, the court is reconsidering laws banning homosexual sodomy.

The court will rule on the constitutionality of requiring public libraries to screen out some material available on library Internet terminals, and on the free speech rights of sneaker company Nike Inc., which has fought allegations that it ran overseas sweatshops.

Other rulings in the offing include a potentially important marker in the court's shift of power from federal to state governments, and a look at state efforts to control the cost of prescription drugs.

The court this year sided with a Texas death row inmate who claimed white prosecutors kept blacks off his jury. The justices have not yet ruled in the case of a Maryland man sentenced to death by a jury that never heard about repeated rapes, beatings and other horrific neglect and abuse in his childhood.

The Supreme Court will have the final say over new rules for raising campaign money, a case that all sides predicted would come before the high court this spring. The court cannot begin its review, however, until a lower court issues its own ruling on the First Amendment implications of the law. That court had been expected to rule by February, which would give the Supreme Court time to consider the case this term.

An unexplained delay in the lower court ruling now probably means the high court would have to hold a special argument session in late spring or work over the summer in order to rule much before the start of presidential primaries.

The timing matters because political candidates are already forming campaigns and raising money for 2004 elections. The new rules ban national party committees from raising unlimited contributions known as soft money and impose new advertising limits on many special-interest groups.

The high court is expected to say this spring whether it will hear the first full-fledged appeal related to post-Sept. 11 security measures. The case concerns closed deportation hearings. The court may also say whether it will hear an appeal of last a widely noted ruling last year, in which a California appeals court ruled the phrase "under God" rendered the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional in public schools.