BAC Bank of America Corporation

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider an appeal by Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and several leading banks that are challenging lawsuits alleging they conspired to set anticompetitive ATM fees.

The case was one of eight new matters the court added to the docket for its next term, a move that will help give the court's upcoming calendar more heft. The court has been operating with eight members since the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia, leading to a dynamic where it has been slow to take new cases and shied away from potential blockbusters.

Other cases added to the docket for the next term, which begins in October, examine issues including mortgage loans, citizenship and international law.

The ATM case comes from litigation where consumers and independent ATM operators, in a 2011 lawsuit, targeted ATM access fee rules that prevent operators from charging lower fees for banking transactions processed on networks that cost less than Visa and MasterCard.

The plaintiffs allege banks including Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. agreed to the ATM restraints when Visa and MasterCard were owned as joint ventures by the banks. The bank card associations went public in 2008 and 2006, but the plaintiffs say the substance of the agreed-upon ATM rules remains in place.

A Washington, D.C., appeals court revived the lawsuits last year after a trial judge previously ruled the allegations weren't strong enough to proceed. The Supreme Court will review that ruling.

In a separate banking industry case, the high court on Tuesday agreed to consider whether the city of Miami can bring fair-housing lawsuits against Bank of America and Wells Fargo. The city alleged the banks engaged in financial crisis-era discriminatory lending that forced minority-owned properties into premature or unnecessary foreclosure.

The city alleged the lending practices led to neighborhood blight and declining property values, which weakened Miami's tax base. The banks deny the allegations and say the city's lawsuit was the brainchild of private plaintiffs' lawyers. They say fair-housing law doesn't give the city a legal right to bring such claims.

Elsewhere, the justices also agreed to consider a case in which an oil-drilling company alleges Venezuela, under the regime of Hugo Chá vez, illegally seized its property and now uses it for the country's state-owned business. The high court will consider an appeal by Venezuela which examines whether a lower court followed the proper legal rules when it decided that it had jurisdiction to consider the lawsuit, brought by Helmerich & Payne International Drilling Co.

The court also agreed to consider the constitutionality of U.S. rules that determine when to grant citizenship to out-of-wedlock children born abroad when one of the parents is a U.S. citizen.

Congress has crafted different rules for citizenship in such circumstances, depending on whether the mother or the father is a citizen. A New York-based appeals court decided the differing rules, which make it harder for a father to transmit citizenship, violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection.

The court previously took up the issue in 2011, but split 4-4 thanks to a recusal from Justice Elena Kagan, who had worked on the case that was then before the court when she served as U.S. Solicitor General.

Justice Kagan isn't recused in the current case and the justices will try again to settle the matter, even though they remain short-handed.

The new case involves a man born in the Dominican Republic whose father was a U.S. citizen. He was convicted in the U.S. in 1995 for robbery and attempted murder, and claimed he was a citizen when federal authorities attempted to deport him.

The court issued its last rulings of the 2015-16 term Monday. All the new cases accepted for review will be heard in the court's next term.

Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 28, 2016 11:15 ET (15:15 GMT)

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