Supreme Court term begins

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is beginning a new term with a case that offers the court’s conservative majority a chance to move aggressively to undo limits on campaign contributions.

The justices probably also will decide in the fall whether to resolve competing lower-court “Hobby Lobby” case decisions — decisions about Hobby Lobby and other employers that contend that new U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regulations violate about the owners’ freedom of conscience by requiring the companies’ health plans to include birth control benefits.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) says individual and group plans must cover a basic package of preventive services without imposing out-of-pocket costs on the insureds.

HHS has defined the package of basic preventive services to include birth control benefits.

In theory, the government shutdown could affect court deliberations this fall. But the court was unaffected for the first few days of the government shutdown and there was no expectation that arguments set for October would have to be rescheduled.

The new term that starts Monday may be short on the sort of high-profile battles over health care and gay marriage that marked the past two years. But several cases ask the court to overrule prior decisions — bold action in an institution that relies on the power of precedent.

“There are an unusual number of cases going right to hot-button cultural issues and aggressive briefing on the conservative side asking precedents to be overruled,” said Georgetown University law professor Pamela Harris, who served in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department.

Paul Clement, a frequent advocate before the court and the top Supreme Court lawyer under President George W. Bush, agreed that the opportunity exists for dramatic precedent-busting decisions. But Clement said each case also offers the court “an off-ramp,” a narrower outcome that may be more in keeping with Chief Justice John Roberts’ stated desire for incremental decision-making that bridges the court’s ideological divide.

The campaign finance argument on Tuesday is the first major case on the calendar. The 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case in 2010 allowed corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited sums in support of or opposition to candidates, as long as the spending is independent of the candidates.

The new case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, is a challenge to the overall limits on what an individual may give to candidates, political parties and political action committees in a two-year federal election cycle, currently $48,600 to candidates and $123,600 in total. The $2,600 limit on contributions to a candidate is not at issue.

Since the Buckley v. Valeo decision in 1976, the court has looked more favorably on contribution limits than on spending restrictions because of the potential for corruption in large contributions. The big issue in the current case is whether the justices will be just as skeptical of limits on contributing as on spending.