Within the court's first weeks, the justices also will decide whether to hear a challenge to Arizona's immigration enforcement law. They also will consider whether to hear several other appeals of how immigration and asylum laws are applied and yet another in a series of challenges to the display of crosses in public places.So far, the docket includes two cases about when legal immigrants may be deported for breaking laws. Additional cases which the court is being asked to take raise legal questions about when immigrants may be placed in deportation proceedings for having committed minor crimes which were retroactively classified as deportable offenses. There has been disagreement among lower courts about these types of cases.Yet another immigration-related case being considered for the calendar questions how asylum law applies to family members of those who are admitted to the United States because of fear that they would be persecuted in their homelands.Also likely to be brought to the high court is Arizona's immigration enforcement law. Parts of Arizona's law known as S.B. 1070 have been blocked from being enacted as courts have considered whether the provisions overstep state authority by delving into immigration, which is an area of federal jurisdiction.Challenges to a Utah practice of allowing roadside crosses commemorating deceased highway patrol officers also are up for consideration by the court.During a Supreme Court preview discussion at the Georgetown University law school Sept. 19, panelists said there are several possible scenarios that could play out for how the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, passed by Congress last year, might reach the Supreme Court.Visiting professor Irv Gornstein, director of the school's Supreme Court Institute, said it's possible the high court might not face the health care law until 2014, because lower courts have been throwing out legal challenges brought by states, saying they lack the standing to sue.—CNS