WASHINGTON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court's nine justices are poised on Monday to open a new nine-month term packed with major cases including disputes centered on race that give members of its conservative majority fresh opportunities to flex their muscles, with an environmental case up first.The top U.S. judicial body annually kicks off its term on the first Monday of October, and the justices have important cases on the schedule right away.The map concentrated the voting power of Black people in the state into a single district even though Alabama's population is 27% Black, while spreading out the rest of the Black population into other districts at levels too small to form a majority.The Supreme Court tackles race again in a dispute to be heard on Oct. 31 that might yield the most momentous ruling of the term, with the conservative majority in a position to end affirmative action admissions policies used by many colleges and universities to increase the number of Black and Hispanic students on their campuses.The universities have said they use race as only one factor in a host of individualized evaluations for admission without quotas, and that curbing the consideration of race would result in a significant drop in the number of Black, Hispanic and other underrepresented students on campus."