The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Wisconsin parents who wanted to challenge a school district’s guidance for supporting transgender students.

The justices, acting in a case from Eau Claire, left in place an appellate ruling dismissing the parents’ lawsuit.

Three justices, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, would have heard the case. That’s one short of what is needed for full review by the Supreme Court.

Parents with children in Eau Claire public schools argued in a lawsuit that the school district’s policy violates constitutional protections for parental rights and religious freedom.

Sixteen Republican-led states had urged the court to take up the parents’ case.

Lower courts had found that the parents lacked the legal right, or standing. Among other reasons, the courts said no parent presented evidence that the policy affected them or their children.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals included two judges Republican Donald Trump appointed during his first term.

But Alito described the case as presenting “a question of great and growing national importance,” whether public school districts violate parents’ rights when they encourage students to transition or assist in the process without parental consent or knowledge.

“Administrative Guidance for Gender Identity Support” encourages transgender students to reach out to staff members with concerns and instructs employees to be careful who they talk to about a student’s gender identity, since not all students are “out” to their families.

Fueled by pricier used cars, hotel rooms and groceries, inflation in the United States moved slightly higher last month in the latest sign that some price pressures remain elevated.

Consumer prices rose 2.7% in November from a year earlier, up from a yearly figure of 2.6% in October. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core prices increased 3.3%, the same as in the previous month. Measured month to month, prices climbed 0.3% from October to November, the biggest such increase since April. Core prices also rose 0.3% for a fourth straight month.

Wednesday’s inflation figures from the Labor Department are the final major piece of data that Federal Reserve officials will consider before they meet next week to decide on interest rates. The relatively mild November increase won’t likely be enough to discourage the officials from cutting their key rate by a quarter-point. The probability of a rate cut next week, as envisioned by Wall Street traders, rose to 98% after Wednesday’s inflation report was released, according to futures pricing tracked by CME FedWatch.

“It’s generally in the ballpark of what the Fed would like to see,” said Jason Pride, chief investment strategist at Glenmede, a wealth management firm. Though sharp increases for such items as groceries and hotel rooms increased overall inflation last month, those categories are often volatile. Pride noted that the cost of services, such as rents, car insurance, and airline fares, cooled in November.

Last week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell suggested that with the economy generally healthy, the Fed could reduce its key rate slowly.

“We’re not quite there on inflation, but we’re making progress,” Powell said. “We can afford to be a little more cautious.”

With the job market cooling, growth in Americans’ paychecks has slowed from a nearly 6% annual pace in 2022 to about 4% now, a rate nearly consistent with inflation at the Fed’s 2% target. Powell has said he doesn’t think the current job market is a driver of higher prices.

Randy Carr, CEO of World Emblem, a maker of patches, labels and badges for companies, universities and law enforcement agencies, said he is providing smaller wage increases, in the 3% to 5% range, than his company did during the height of inflation.

“Things have kind of leveled off,” he said.

Carr’s customers, which include the company that makes emblems for UPS uniforms, generally won’t accept price hikes much more than 2% a year. So World Emblem aims to offset the cost of its higher wages through greater efficiencies in manufacturing.

In September, the Fed slashed its benchmark rate, which affects many consumer and business loans, by a sizable half-point. It followed that move with a quarter-point rate cut in November. Those cuts lowered the central bank’s key rate to 4.6%, down from a four-decade high of 5.3%.

Though inflation is now way below its peak of 9.1% in June 2022, average prices are still about 20% higher than they were three years ago — a major source of public discontent that helped drive President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in November.

Grocery prices jumped last month, an uncomfortable reminder for consumers that food prices remain a big drag on households’ budgets. Beef prices leapt 3.1% just from October to November and are up 5% from a year earlier.

Egg prices, which have been volatile for more than two years, in part because of outbreaks of bird flu, soared 8.2% just last month. They are nearly 38% higher than a year ago.

Gas prices ticked up 0.6% from October to November, ending a string of declines. Still, gas is down more than 8% from a year earlier. Hotel prices leapt 3.2% from October to November and are 3.7% higher than a year ago.

Hearing a high-profile culture-war clash, a majority of the Supreme Court seemed reluctant Wednesday to block Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

The justices’ decision, not expected for several months, could affect similar laws enacted by another 25 states and a range of other efforts to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use.

The case is coming before a conservative-dominated court after a presidential election in which Donald Trump and his allies promised to roll back protections for transgender people.

In arguments that passed the two-hour mark Wednesday, five conservative justices voiced varying degrees of skepticism of arguments made by the Biden administration and lawyers for Tennessee families challenging the ban.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted in the majority in a 2020 case in favor of transgender rights, questioned whether judges, rather than lawmakers, should be weighing in on a question of regulating medical procedures, an area usually left to the states.

”The Constitution leaves that question to the people’s representatives, rather than to nine people, none of whom is a doctor,” Roberts said in an exchange with ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio.

The court’s three liberal justices seem firmly on the side of the challengers. But it’s not clear that any of the court’s six conservatives will go along. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion in 2020, has yet to say anything.

Four years ago, the court ruled in favor of Aimee Stephens, who was fired by a Michigan funeral home after she informed its owner that she was a transgender woman. The court held that transgender people, as well as gay and lesbian people, are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace.

The Biden administration and the families and health care providers who challenged the Tennessee law are urging the justices to apply the same sort of analysis that the majority, made up of liberal and conservative justices, embraced in the case four years ago when it found that “sex plays an unmistakable role” in employers’ decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behavior they otherwise tolerate.

The issue in the Tennessee case is whether the law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same.

Tennessee’s law bans puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors, but not “across the board,” lawyers for the families wrote in their Supreme Court brief. The lead lawyer, Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, is the first openly transgender person to argue in front of the justices.

Harvey Weinstein was hospitalized Monday following an “alarming blood test,” his attorney said, less than a week after the disgraced movie mogul filed a legal claim alleging substandard medical care at New York City’s notorious jail complex.

Weinstein, 72, was sent to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for an “emergent treatment due to an alarming blood test result that requires immediate medical attention,” his attorney, Imran Ansari, said in a statement.

“It is expected that he will remain there until his condition stabilizes,” the statement continues. “His deprivation of care is not only medical malpractice, but a violation of his constitutional rights.”

A spokesperson for New York City’s Department of Correction did not immediately respond to an email. The agency’s inmate database confirmed that Weinstein had been transferred from Rikers Island to the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward in Manhattan.

Weinstein has been in city custody since earlier this year after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction in the state. The case is set to be retried in 2025. Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing.

In a legal filing last week, Weinstein’s attorneys accused the city of providing him with substandard medical care for a litany of medical afflictions, which include chronic myeloid leukemia and diabetes.

“When I last visited him, I found him with blood spatter on his prison garb, possibly from IV’s, clothes that had not been washed for weeks, and he had not even been provided clean underwear — hardly sanitary conditions for someone with severe medical conditions,” Ansari said in a statement that likened Rikers Island to a “gulag.”

The troubled jail complex, located on an island in New York City’s East River, has faced growing scrutiny for its mistreatment of detainees and dangerous conditions. Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for a possible federal takeover of the jail system, finding the city had placed its incarcerated population in “unconstitutional danger.”

A publicist for Weinstein, Juda Engelmayer, echoed the allegation in a statement Monday.

“Mr. Weinstein, who is suffering from a number of illnesses, including leukemia, has been deprived the medical attention that someone in his medical state deserves, prisoner or not,” he said. “In many ways, this mistreatment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”

A top Romanian court on Thursday asked the official electoral authority to recount and verify all of the ballots cast in the first round of the presidential election, which was won by a far-right outsider candidate, sending shockwaves through the political establishment.

The Constitutional Court in Bucharest approved the recounting of the more than 9.4 million ballots, and said its decision was final. The Central Election Bureau is expected to meet on Thursday afternoon to discuss the request.

Calin Georgescu, a little-known, far-right populist and independent candidate, won the first round, beating the incumbent prime minister. Georgescu was due to face reformist Elena Lasconi, the leader of the Save Romania Union party, in a Dec. 8. runoff.

Georgescu’s unexpected success has prompted nightly protests by people concerned with previous remarks he made in praising Romanian fascist and nationalist leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and believe he poses a threat to democracy.

Without naming Georgescu, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis’ office said following a Supreme Council of National Defense meeting in Bucharest on Thursday that an analysis of documents revealed that “a presidential candidate benefited from massive exposure due to preferential treatment granted by the TikTok platform.”

Earlier this week, Romania’s National Audiovisual Council asked the European Commission to investigate TikTok’s role in the Nov. 24 vote. Pavel Popescu, the vice president of Romania’s media regulator Ancom, said he would request TikTok’s suspension in Romania if investigations find evidence of “manipulation of the electoral process.”

The vote recount was prompted by a complaint made by Cristian Terhes, a former presidential candidate of the Romanian National Conservative Party who garnered 1% of the vote. Terhes alleged that Lasconi’s party had urged people to vote before some diaspora polls had closed on Sunday, saying it violated electoral laws against campaign activities on polling day.

After Thursday’s court ruling, Terhes’ press office posted on Facebook that the court ordered the recount “due to indications of fraud,” and alleged that valid votes cast for Ludovic Orban — who had dropped out of the race but remained on the ballot — had been reassigned to Lasconi.

It is the first time in Romania’s 35-year post-communist history that the country’s most powerful party, the Social Democratic Party, did not have a candidate in the second round of a presidential race. Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu resigned as party leader after he narrowly lost to Lasconi by just 2,740 votes.

Louisiana’s plan to make all of the state’s public school classrooms post the Ten Commandments next year remains on hold under an order Wednesday by a federal appeals court in New Orleans.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a state request to temporarily stay an earlier order by U.S. District Judge John deGravelles in Baton Rouge while litigation continues. Arguments before a 5th Circuit panel are scheduled for Jan. 23, meaning the judge’s order stays in effect well past the law’s Jan. 1 deadline to post the commandments.

The state contends that deGravelles’ order affects only the five school districts that are defendants in a legal challenge. But it’s unclear whether or how the law would be enforced in the state’s 67 other districts while the appeal progresses. Also, deGravelles ordered that all schools in every district be notified of his decision that the law is unconstitutional, a requirement maintained by Wednesday’s ruling.

“We’re pleased that the Court of Appeals left the district court’s injunction fully intact,” said Sam Grover, an attorney with the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “As the district court ruled, this law is unconstitutional on its face.”

State Attorney General Liz Murrill said in an emailed statement that her office would “continue to defend this clearly constitutional law.”

DeGravelles ruled that the law, passed by the GOP-dominated Legislature, was “overtly religious” and “unconstitutional on its face.” He also said it amounted to unconstitutional religious government coercion of students, who are legally required to attend school.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the bill into law in June, prompting a group of Louisiana public school parents of different faiths to sue. They argue the law violates the First Amendment’s provisions forbidding the government from establishing a religion or blocking the free exercise of it. They also say the proposed poster-sized display would isolate students, especially those who are not Christian. The parents further argue that the version of the Ten Commandments specified in the law is favored by many protestants and doesn’t match any version found in Jewish tradition.

Proponents say the Ten Commandments are not solely religious and have a historical significance to the foundation of U.S. law. Murrill, the Republican attorney general, has said she disagreed with deGravelles’ ruling and that the law is constitutional under Supreme Court precedents.

The state’s loss in court on Wednesday came after a partial victory last week, when a 5th Circuit panel temporarily blocked instructions in DeGravelles’ order that state education officials notify schools in all districts of his finding that the law is unconstitutional.