1. Court Takes Case on Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court will revisit the issue of affirmative action in college admissions in a case filed by a white student who was denied a place at the University of Texas’s main campus in Austin. It will be the first case since a 2003 decision that endorsed the use of race in university admissions. The now more conservative court is being asked to rule that Texas’s affirmative-action policy is unconstitutional, possibly by overruling its earlier decision altogether. Justice Samuel Alito is more hostile to affirmative action than his predecessor, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Justice Elena Kagan has recused herself from the case.