for more on the court's move, newshour contributor, marcia coyle of the national law journal. , a big day! >> absolutely. >> woodruff: so we know gay marriage is now legal in 36 states. what's the significance of the court taking up cases from michigan, ohio, kentucky and tennessee. >>tennessee. as you probably remember, last october the court had seven cases and declined to review those cases. the big difference between october and today is the fact that, in november, a lower federal appellate court broke with the trend across the lower federal appellate courts and upheld state bans on marriage by gay and lesbian couples as well as bans on the recognition of legal out-of-state same-sex marriages. so that created a circuit split, which is one of the key criteria for granting review by the supreme court. >> woodruff: so that was a couple of months ago. other than the fact it is a split, any sense of why the court would jump on this and say, all right, we're now ready to look at this? >> i think they were waiting for the right cases to get to them, but i really do think the circu

we are joined now by newshour contributor marcia coyle of the national law journal. marcia, let's talk first about this unanimous decision having to do with the case we just described, a prisoner in arkansas who wanted to grow a beard. >> right. >> woodruff: he ease a muslim. tell us about this. >> right. gregory holt claimed the no beard policy by arkansas violated his right under a federal law known as the religious land use and institutionalized person act of 2000 and that act prohibits the government from substantially burdening an institutionalized person's religious expression unless the government chooses the least restrictive means to achieve a compelling government interest. arkansas defended its policy in the supreme court saying it had two compelling interests. it wanted to cut back on the hiding of contraband within beards. it also wanted to ensure quick identification of prisoners who might by growing beards alter their appearance and get into forbidden areas of a prison. justice alito wrote for a unanimous supreme court today and said the kurt doesn't re

to walk us through what happened is newshour contributor marcia coyle of "the national law journal." e back. we saw you just last night. >> yes, you did. happy to be back. >> woodruff: a lot going on at the court. marcia, this is a case closely watched in many places including the civil rights community. tell us what's going on. >> the texas housing agency administers a system of federal tax credits to developers who will build housing for low-income families. the inclusive communities project in texas is app organization that advocates integration of predominantly white suburbs of dallas, texas. the project sued the texas housing agency claiming it had violated the federal fair housing act because most of the development that was receiving federal tax credits was being done in poor minority communities. the lower federal courts said that the project could bring the kind of claim that it has brought under the federal law something we call disparate impact claim. that claim says texas housing agency seems to have a policy for these tax credits neutral on its face but it has a discrimin