Weighty U.S. Supreme Court term dawns with environmental and race cases
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court's nine justices are poised on Monday to open a new nine-month term packed with major cases including disputes centered on race that give members of its conservative majority fresh opportunities to flex their muscles, with an environmental case up first.
The top U.S. judicial body annually kicks off its term on the first Monday of October, and the justices have important cases on the schedule right away. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. President Joe Biden's appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson - America's first Black woman justice - joins the court's liberal bloc after being confirmed by the Senate in April to succeed now-retired Justice Stephen Breyer.
On the term's first day, the justices are set to hear arguments in a case that could limit the scope of a landmark federal environmental law, the Clean Water Act of 1972. The court issued a decision in June that constrained the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under a different anti-pollution law, the Clean Air Act.
The court on Monday will consider for a second time a bid by Chantell and Mike Sackett, a married couple from Idaho, to build a home on property that the EPA has deemed a protected wetland requiring a permit under the Clean Water Act, which they had failed to obtain.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/weighty-u-s-supreme-court-term-dawns-with-environmental-and-race-cases/ar-AA12vaT0