Supreme Court

It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status. Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years. The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity.

WASHINGTON - Monsanto Co. and other companies that patent seeds may prohibit farmers from growing a second crop from their genetically modified seeds, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously. The closely watched decision was a clear victory for agribusiness giants and their biotechnological innovations, which have increased crop yields. But it was a setback for the many disgruntled farmers who have complained about the high cost of these miracle seeds. By a 9-0 vote, the justices decided the patent for a specialized seed outlives the first planting.

Can a private company own rights to your DNA? The nine justices of the Supreme Court will consider that question Monday as lawyers for Myriad Genetics make their best case that the company should be able to keep its patent on two genes known to influence the risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Challenging that notion will be lawyers representing the Assn. for Molecular Pathology and other scientific organizations, which argue that allowing genes to be patented slows or shuts down scientific research involving those genes.

WASHINGTON - A New Hampshire man who had his car towed when he was in a hospital recovering from a heart attack and the amputation of his left foot won a measure of justice at the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 9-0 decision released Monday, the court said Robert Pelkey can sue Dan's City Used Cars for disposing of his towed car without telling him or paying him. The case began during a snowstorm in February 2007. Pelkey's 2004 Honda Civic was parked legally in a handicapped parking spot in his apartment complex in Manchester, but he was confined to his bed. Under the apartment's policy, cars were to be removed to clear the snow, and Pelkey's car was towed away.

Marc Christian MacGinnis, who won a multimillion-dollar settlement in 1991 from the estate of his ex-lover, actor Rock Hudson, after convincing a jury Hudson had knowingly exposed him to AIDS, has died. He was 56. Known as Marc Christian, he died of pulmonary problems June 2 at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. The details were confirmed Friday by his sister, Susan Dahl, who said she did not publicly announce his death earlier because of her brother's wish for privacy.

WASHINGTON - Can a public high school hold its graduation ceremony in a local church? The Supreme Court has been pondering that question in its private conference for six weeks, discussing whether to take up a Wisconsin case that could reset the line separating church and state. Last year, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that the Elmbrook School District, near Milwaukee, violated the 1st Amendment and its ban on "an establishment of religion" by holding a high school graduation ceremony in the sanctuary of an evangelical Christian church.

WASHINGTON - Police officers usually must have a search warrant before requiring a suspected drunk driver to have his blood drawn, the Supreme Court said Wednesday. In an 8-1 decision, the justices rejected Missouri prosecutors' contention that police should have the freedom to act quickly and dispense with a warrant because alcohol dissipates in the blood. Instead, the court said it would hold fast to its view that the 4th Amendment's ban on "unreasonable searches" means the police usually need a warrant from a magistrate before invading a person's privacy.

It's no surprise that professional pundits are shocked that the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority appears ready to toss out the entire federal healthcare plan -- the plan Republicans delight in calling "Obamacare. " Self-proclaimed experts are often wrong, though that does not slow down their relentless prognostications and chatter. And it will be no surprise that conservatives who decry judicial activism will cheer the justices if they choose to engage in decidedly bold judicial activism by nullifying a major piece of legislation passed and approved by democratically elected members of the legislative and executive branches of government.

WASHINGTON - Speaking before a bank of microphones on the Supreme Court steps moments after the argument over gay marriage in California ended, lawyers for both sides said the justices asked probing questions and did not reveal much about how they would decide the case. Proponents in favor of legalizing gay marriage in California erupted in cheers and whistles as David Boies and Ted Olson emerged from the central door to the court. Both high-profile lawyers were part of the legal team arguing that the court should overturn the state ban. Boies told reporters it was "amazing" that the proponents of Proposition 8, the initiative that prohibited gay marriage, made "no effort to defend the ban on gay marriage.

The Supreme Court, in a key ruling supporting the enforcement powers of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn., ruled Monday that the organization may force Nevada Las Vegas to suspend its highly successful basketball coach, Jerry Tarkanian, for recruiting violations and other irregularities. On a 5-4 vote, the high court said that the NCAA does not have to follow the same constitutional guidelines that cover government agencies in investigating violations of regulations.

WASHINGTON - Can a public high school hold its graduation ceremony in a local church? The Supreme Court has been pondering that question in its private conference for six weeks, discussing whether to take up a Wisconsin case that could reset the line separating church and state. Last year, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that the Elmbrook School District, near Milwaukee, violated the 1st Amendment and its ban on "an establishment of religion" by holding a high school graduation ceremony in the sanctuary of an evangelical Christian church.

SAN FRANCISCO - The California Supreme Court gave local governments the power Monday to zone medical marijuana dispensaries out of existence, a decision that upholds bans in about 200 cities but does little to solve Los Angeles' years-long struggle to regulate hundreds of storefront pot outlets. The unanimous decision provided clarity for cities and counties that want to rid themselves of the dispensaries, which sprouted up statewide after a 1996 voter-approved measure that sought to authorize medical marijuana but lacked specifics in how it would be regulated.

WASHINGTON - Americans do not have a right to obtain public records from states other than their own, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, dealing a setback to businesses and researchers who gather data across the nation. The unanimous decision upheld laws in Virginia and a handful of other states that release some public records only to their own citizens. "This is disappointing. We have a national information economy now, and all sorts of activities depend on data from all 50 states," said Washington attorney Deepak Gupta, who represented two men who had challenged the "citizens only" provision of Virginia's public records law. Despite the ruling, Gupta said the trend has been for states to open their public records on an equal basis.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A Pakistani court on Tuesday slapped former military ruler Pervez Musharraf with a lifetime ban that prevents him from running for public office again, the latest in a long line of setbacks for the onetime president since his return to his home country after four years of self-imposed exile. The 69-year-old former general is already under house arrest for ordering the detention of dozens of judges in 2007 while he was in power. He is being held at his sprawling home in Islamabad rather than in jail, a measure authorities opted for because of threats made to the former leader's life by Pakistani Taliban militants.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court made it clear Monday that enforcing immigration laws was reserved for the federal government, not the states. By an 8-1 vote, the justices rejected a request from Alabama to revive part of a 2011 law designed to drive out illegal immigrants. That year saw a wave of new laws in Republican-controlled states where lawmakers decried federal inaction. Alabama's was deemed the toughest. State officials said that if federal authorities were not going to arrest illegal immigrants, their police would take on the task.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court was asked Monday whether Congress violated the 1st Amendment when it required global groups fighting AIDS to explicitly oppose prostitution and sexual trafficking as a condition of receiving federal grants. Several of the groups, including the Alliance for Open Society International, objected to the requirement, not because they favored prostitution. They said it would interfere with their work. They seek to encourage women, including prostitutes, to come to their clinics for testing and treatment.

Former Lincoln Savings & Loan boss Charles H. Keating Jr. won a final victory Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court, defeating attempts to reinstate his 1991 state court conviction on charges of swindling elderly investors. Without comment, the high court refused to reopen the case, leaving intact lower court rulings that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lance Ito had allowed a flawed prosecution.

Clement F. Haynsworth Jr., whose 1969 nomination to the Supreme Court by President Richard M. Nixon was rejected by the Senate because of questions about his judicial ethics and views on minorities, died of a heart attack Wednesday. He was 77. The semi-retired federal judge died at home. His wife, Dorothy, said her husband had suffered from a heart ailment in the last year but had continued to hear cases part-time.

Re "Scalia's poison pen," Opinion, April 14 Bigoted as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's views on homosexuality seem, he makes a valid legal point by intimating that equal protection claims asserted to support gay marriage similarly support incestuous unions. Both gay and incestuous couples long were excluded from marriage because of biological considerations. Gays couldn't reproduce, and incestuous couples couldn't do so without a high risk of birth defects. That all changed with the advent of artificial insemination, surrogate pregnancy and other alternative conception techniques.

Human rights groups are appropriately appalled by the breadth of a U.S. Supreme Court decision this week that would make it exceedingly difficult for some victims of human rights abuses committed in other countries to win redress in U.S. courts. Led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a self-proclaimed foe of judicial activism, the court reined in the use of a 1789 law known as the Alien Tort Statute, which gives federal courts jurisdiction over "any civil action by an alien for a tort committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.