Court begins its term as social issues loom
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court began a new term yesterday, in which it will rule on landmark social cases. It refused to hear 1,900 appeals that had piled up during its summer recess.
The nation's high court returned to the bench, reconvening on the required first Monday in October, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. announced the official opening of the term that lasts through June. The session lasted about 10 minutes.
Because of the Yom Kippur holy day, the Supreme Court did not hear oral arguments.
The court's two Jewish members, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, did not attend the session.
During its new term, the Supreme Court has agreed to rule on cases on abortion rights, the environment, and racial diversity in schools.
It will be the second full term for Roberts, who succeeded the late William H. Rehnquist, and the first full term for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who replaced the more moderate Sandra Day O'Connor.
President Bush appointed the two conservative jurists.
Legal specialists are watching whether the court under Roberts limits or overturns precedents upholding abortion rights for women and programs to foster a racially diverse student body.
Among the cases the Supreme Court turned down yesterday:
A lawsuit by parents objecting to a three-week class for seventh-graders on Islam. Jonas and Tiffany Eklund objected to pupils at a public school in California being given pages from the opening chapter of the Koran to read, and being assigned to study Islam's Five Pillars of Faith.
A case brought by privacy advocates who say the Bush administration's rules for disclosing medical records are too lax. Ten groups, representing 750,000 consumers, medical practitioners, and patients challenged a federal rule that encourages development of an information system for electronic transfer of health data.
The case of John Hansl, a member of the SS Death's Head battalion that guarded concentration camps at Sachsenhausen near Berlin in 1943 and Natzweiler in France in 1944. The government revoked the US citizenship of Hansel, who argued that unlike other Nazi camp guards, he did not hide his wartime past.
An appeal by Detroit newspapers of a National Labor Relations Board ruling ordering the partnership that prints, distributes, and sells advertising for The Detroit News and The Detroit Free Press to reinstate fired employees.
A free-speech case involving Gloria Allred, a prominent California lawyer. Allred was the subject of a gag order in the murder trial of Scott Dyleski, the teenager convicted of killing Pamela Vitale. Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. 
