Federal Judge

President Obama once fretted about the prospect that girls as young as 10 or 11 could walk into a drugstore and buy emergency contraception pills as easily as "bubble gum or batteries. " With his blessing, the Department of Health and Human Services set aside the advice of medical experts and blocked efforts to allow girls younger than 17 to get the so-called morning-after pill without a prescription. That age limit is poised to disappear now that a federal judge has cleared the way Friday for girls - and boys - of any age to purchase the medication without having to notify their parents or a doctor.

SEATTLE -- The former chief federal judge in Montana has decided to retire at the conclusion of a misconduct investigation into a racist email about President Obama he forwarded to friends from his work computer last year. U.S. District Judge Richard F. Cebull, who had taken less-active senior status on the bench after the incident, will retire in May, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' chief judge, Alex Kozinski, said in a statement. The decision follows an appeals court inquiry into the email controversy that involved interviews with Cebull and others and a review of “voluminous” documentation, including emails, Kozinski said.

A federal judge ruled Monday that Stockton is eligible for bankruptcy protection, despite the objection of creditors who argued the city could come up with more money.  Stockton is the biggest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy.   When it filed last June, Mayor Ann Johnston said there were no  alternatives. "We are extremely disappointed that we have been unable to avoid bankruptcy," Johnston said in a statement at the time. "This is what we must do to get our fiscal house in order and protect the safety and welfare of our citizens.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Retired U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, whose ruling on Proposition 8 led to Tuesday's U.S. Supreme Court hearing,  presided over the first federal trial  on same-sex marriage. The tall, lanky, white-haired former judge is now in private practice in San Francisco doing mediation and private judging. Walker, 69,  retired in February 2011. He was busy mediating a business dispute Tuesday morning but was going to listen to a recording of the arguments and read a transcript later.

It took more than 13 years and appeals at nearly every level of the state and federal court system, but with the simple turn of a key by a state correctional officer on Tuesday afternoon, Daniel Larsen was unshackled and free. "I feel good, feel blessed," Larsen said with an ear-to-ear grin as he rode the elevator down to the main floor of the U.S. Central District Court in downtown Los Angeles, surrounded by friends and family. Magistrate Judge Suzanne Segal ordered Larsen's release, finding that he was "actually innocent" of carrying a concealed knife during a 1998 bar fight in Northridge.

Judge Denise J. Casper, the first African American woman to sit as federal judge in Massachusetts, will preside over the trial of mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, replacing the former judge was ordered to step aside because of his former role as a prosecutor, court officials announced  Friday. Casper, who has been a federal judge in Boston since December 2010, replaces Judge Richard G. Stearns who was taken off the case after a federal appellate court ruled Thursday that his role as a former federal prosecutor could create the appearance of bias.

A federal judge in San Francisco on Friday ruled unconstitutional one of the most controversial features of the Patriot Act: the ability of the FBI to demand records from phone companies, Internet service providers, banks and credit agencies in complete secrecy and without judicial review. The "national security letters" issued by the FBI don't cover the content of someone's communications, just the circumstances. But that information alone can be highly revealing ; for example, the letters can be used to catalog which websites someone visited and with whom they corresponded by email.

OAKLAND -- A federal judge made it clear Thursday she won't grant California's bid to dismiss a lawsuit filed by state prisoners challenging the state's use of prolonged isolation -- in some cases decades -- for inmates not convicted of a new crime. Plaintiffs at Pelican Bay State Prison have remained in segregation for more than 10 years, “deprived of basic human needs for human contact and environmental stimulation,” their lawyer, Jules Lobel with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, argued in U.S. District Court before Chief Judge Claudia Wilken.

A federal judge has rebuked Gov. Jerry Brown's lawyers for taking a swipe at the court-appointed monitor for prison mental health care. U.S. District Senior Judge Lawrence Karlton on Wednesday issued an order giving California five days to either show why its allegations against Special Master Matthew Lopes should remain in the court record, or take them back. "The court takes very seriously any allegation of unethical conduct," Karlton wrote. "However, the court can only be dismayed by the cavalier manner in which defendants ... level a smear against the character and reputation of the Special Master...

It's not easy being a book consumer these days. For starters, books seem so long - at least compared to the blog posts and online news items that have recalibrated the pace of the average American attention span. And that's not the half of it. Some books will kill your dreams. Worse, they'll build up your dreams and then knock them down without so much as a refund or a credit for a Frappuccino at Barnes & Noble. When that happens, the only choice is to sue. At least that seems to be the logic of Rob Stutzman and Jonathan Wheeler, two California men so aggrieved by Lance Armstrong's recent doping admissions that they have become the named plaintiffs in a class-action complaint against Armstrong and his publishers over his memoirs "It's Not About the Bike" and "Every Second Counts.