Waiting on Key Supreme Court Decisions
COSTELLO: We will find out in just a few minutes if the U.S. Supreme Court will issue a ruling today on any one of key rulings still on its plate and it could be a decision on affirmative action. Carrie Severino is the chief counsel and policy director for Judicial Crisis Network. Good morning.</s>CARRIE SEVERINO, CHIEF COUNSEL AND POLICY DIRECTOR, JUDICIAL CRISIS NETWORK: Good morning. How are you doing?</s>COSTELLO: I'm good. So I could be completely wrong, they could rule on same-sex or the voting rights act, but we think they're going to rule on affirmative action and if you could just take us to that case briefly we would appreciate it.</s>SEVERINO: Sure. Well we don't know which case it will be, but if it's this case, this is the longest outstanding case on the court's calendar. It's Fisher versus University of Texas and deals with a challenge to their affirmative action program that the University of Texas has. The question is going to be whether that program is too strict in how it balances the -- the braces, in saying we need to have exactly the same racial balance as a state as a whole. This goes a little beyond the case of Grutter versus Bollinger that the court decided several years ago at the University of Michigan. So the question is whether they are going to just say well we will keep what we said before. We're going to say we really strictly scrutinize these opinions, these state decisions, or whether they'll say this is not too big of a deal, we'll let it slide. And we think Justice Kennedy will come out with that case and I think they'll probably find the University of Texas goes too far in its racial preferences on campus.</s>COSTELLO: Yes and just to put into personal terms, we are seeing a young woman in the video that we we're running previous to this, her name was Abigail Fisher, she says she was denied admission to the University of Texas because she was white. The interesting thing about this case and I know you're saying it hinges on Kennedy but Justice Kagan recused herself. This decision could possibly end in a tie, couldn't it?</s>SEVERINO: It could. If that happens, the lower court decisions stands Justice Kagan was involved in this case when she was Solicitor General because they filed an amicus brief in this case, so she's recused from the case.</s>COSTELLO: Ok so we'll find out in the 10:00 o'clock hour, 10:00 o'clock Eastern hour of NEWSROOM what the decision will be hopefully. Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director for Judicial Crisis Networks, thanks so much for being here.</s>SEVERINO: Thanks for having me.</s>COSTELLO: Still ahead in the NEWSROOM, the San Antonio Spurs are one game away from taking the NBA title. Highlights of their big win over Miami in "Bleacher Report".