It's not easy to prevent the Supreme Court from deciding an issue once the justices have agreed to hear a case.

But over the past two years, civil rights advocates have managed to do just that by coaxing settlements in a pair of high-profile housing discrimination cases weeks before the court was set to hear oral arguments.

The advocates' goal was to remove any chance that court conservatives might undermine a powerful legal doctrine the Obama administration and others have used increasingly to enforce the Fair Housing Act.

While those last-minute settlements pushed the issue down the road, the Supreme Court could decide as early as this month whether to take up yet another case challenging so-called "disparate impact" lawsuits.

In disparate impact cases, plaintiffs rely on statistics to show that seemingly neutral housing or lending practices can disproportionately harm racial minorities, even if there is no proof of intent to discriminate. The theory has been used for years to show bias in employment cases, but Texas officials are urging the justices to find that it doesn't apply in housing discrimination cases.