The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to halt gay marriages in the state, leaving opponents of same-sex weddings few if any legal options to stop the unions.

The brief, unanimous ruling tossed out a legal challenge by ban supporters without addressing their legal arguments in support of Proposition 8, a ballot measure passed by voter in 2008 that banned gay marriage.

Austin R. Nimocks, an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, a group that wants to end gay marriage, said the ruling does not end the debate in California. He called on lawmakers to ban gay marriage but declined to say whether a legal challenge will be filed.

"Though the current California officials are unwilling to enforce the state constitution, we remain hopeful that one day Californians will elect officials who will" he said.

Supporters of gay marriage were girding for a continued fight.

"By now, I suppose we know better than to predict that Prop 8 proponents will actually give up their fight," San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said. "But it's certainly fair to say that their remaining legal options are increasingly absurd."

The state high court ruling came about two months after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider the issue, leaving in place a lower-court ruling that struck down the ballot measure as unconstitutional.

A New York man pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to trying to extort $200,000 from Paula Deen by threatening to reveal damaging information about the embattled celebrity cook if she didn't pay him to stay quiet.

"I had, I guess, some bad judgment," 62-year-old Thomas George Paculis told a U.S. District Court judge in Savannah.

"I do take responsibility for what I have done."Paculis, of Newfield, acknowledged sending emails to Deen's attorney offering to trade his silence for cash in June. It came a few days after documents became public that revealed the former Food Network star had said under oath that she used racial slurs in the past.

As Deen's culinary empire began to crumble, Paculis claimed he could reveal things that would bring her "financial hardship and even ruin," according to one email that invited Deen's lawyer to "make me an offer I can't refuse."

Neither Paculis nor federal authorities have revealed what sort of dirt the defendant claimed he could dish up regarding Deen or if he truly had any at all. He owned a restaurant in Savannah in the 1990s, but Deen told the FBI she didn't recognize his name or his face.

Federal courts officials in Minnesota say they're worried automatic spending cuts will jeopardize the justice system's smooth operation, with layoffs likely in both the U.S. attorney and public defender's offices.

The cuts are part of what's known as the budget sequester, and they're due to take effect Oct. 1 barring a deal in Congress.

The national public defenders service is facing a 23 percent cut, and Minnesota's federal defender, Katherian Roe, said she will likely have to reduce her staff from 18 people to 10.

Jeanne Cooney, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for Minnesota, said her office will see cuts in personnel and operations but the extent isn't clear yet. The office has already been under a hiring and salary freeze.

"All indications are that all U.S. Attorney offices will be faced with huge cuts in order to get to the budget levels ordered per sequestration," Cooney said.

Each office's cuts will be determined by the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, part of the Justice Department in Washington.

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that a Pennsylvania school district cannot ban "I (heart) Boobies!" bracelets, rejecting the district's claim that the slogan _ designed to promote breast cancer awareness among young people _ is lewd.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also concluded that school officials didn't prove the bracelets were disruptive.

"Because the bracelets here are not plainly lewd and because they comment on a social issue, they may not be categorically banned," Judge D. Brooks Smith wrote in the 9-5 decision.

The ruling is a victory for two Easton Area School District girls who challenged the school rule in 2010 with help from the American Civil Liberties Union. Easton is one of several school districts around the country to ban the bracelets, which are distributed by the nonprofit Keep A Breast Foundation of Carlsbad, Calif.

ACLU lawyer Mary Catherine Roper said the ruling supports the rights of students to discuss important topics.

A judge rejected on Friday an attempt to file a class action discrimination lawsuit on behalf of 150,000 Wal-Mart women employees in California who claimed their male colleagues were paid more and promoted faster than them.

The lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court was a scaled-down version of an initial complaint filed in 2001 that sought to represent 1.6 million women nationwide. But the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out that class action lawsuit in 2011, ruling it found no convincing proof of companywide discrimination on pay and promotion policy. The court also said there were too many women in too many jobs at Wal-Mart to wrap into one lawsuit.

After that setback, the women's lawyers filed smaller class action lawsuits, alleging discrimination occurred in different states and Wal-Mart "regions."

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled the smaller suit on behalf of California women employees was still too disparate and wide ranging to qualify as a class action lawsuit. He also found that the lawyers failed to show statistical and anecdotal evidence of gender bias.

Despite warnings from California officials, the nation's highest court is refusing to delay the early release of nearly 10,000 California inmates by year's end to ease overcrowding at 33 adult prisons.

In its decision Friday, the Supreme Court dismissed an emergency request by the Gov. Jerry Brown to halt a lower court's directive for the early release.

Law enforcement officials expressed concern about the ruling.

The justices ignored efforts already under way to reduce prison populations and "chose instead to allow for the release of more felons into already overburdened communities," said Covina Police Chief Kim Raney, president of the California Police Chiefs Association.

Brown's office referred a request for comment to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, where Secretary Jeff Beard vowed that the state would press on with a still-pending appeal in hope of preventing the releases.

A panel of three federal judges had previously ordered the state to cut its prison population by nearly 8 percent to roughly 110,000 inmates by Dec. 31 to avoid conditions amounting to cruel and unusual punishment. That panel, responding to decades of lawsuits filed by inmates, repeatedly ordered early releases after finding inmates were needlessly dying and suffering because of inadequate medical and mental health care caused by overcrowding.