The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal seeking to expand the ability of foreigners to contribute to American political campaigns.

The justices on Monday upheld a federal court ruling in favor of the ban on foreign contributions from all but immigrants who permanently live in the United States.

Washington lawyer Michael Carvin wanted the justices to extend their 2010 decision in the Citizens United case allowing greater political participation by corporations and labor unions. Carvin sued on behalf of two people with visas to work in the United States.

A three-judge court in Washington said Congress was well within its powers when it prohibited most foreigners from making campaign contributions.

A federal appeals court is hearing arguments in a case that challenges the planned use of reclaimed water for snowmaking at an Arizona ski resort.

The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear the case Monday morning in San Francisco.

The Save the Peaks Coalition and a group of citizens want the U.S. Forest Service to do a more thorough environmental analysis on the health and safety risks of using treated wastewater for artificial snow.

A lower court has ruled that the Forest Service adequately considered the impacts of the snowmaking plan and that the record supported the agency's decision to allow it.

More than a dozen tribes consider the mountain sacred. American Indian tribes argued unsuccessfully in a separate case that the plan violated religious freedom.

Court documents reveal grisly details about the hatchet killing of one woman and the razor attack of another in northwest Missouri, crimes that have been connected to a Platte City man.

Quintin P. O'Dell, a 22-year-old Eagle Scout, is scheduled to be arraigned Monday on charges of first-degree murder, first-degree assault and armed criminal action. Prosecutor Eric Zahnd said the death penalty would be considered in the Platte County Circuit Court case.

O'Dell is jailed in Platte County on a $750,000 cash-only bond. There is no record of him having an attorney, according to the prosecutor's office.

The investigation into the hatchet attack began this spring after the body of Alissa Faye Shippert, 22, was discovered. She had been attacked while fishing in the Platte Falls Conservation Area.

But O'Dell, who had worked with Shippert at a convenience store, wasn't charged in the crime until after he was questioned in the December razor attack. The victim in that incident, a 21-year-old woman, awoke in her Ferrelview apartment the morning after Christmas with her belly slashed open.

Authorities said she was unconscious and on a ventilator for several days after the attack. According to the probable cause statement, she gradually began sharing details with investigators, including that she had spent Christmas night drinking with O'Dell.

According to court documents, O'Dell was interviewed by investigators this past week and told them he called the woman Christmas night and asked if he could "hang out." She agreed and he arrived after 11 p.m. with a six-pack of beer and a bottle of tequila, a detective said in the probable cause statement.

Leading employment law firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP has issued its annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report, covering a charged national landscape of "bet the company" employment disputes fueled by an aggressive plaintiffs' bar, invigorated federal and state enforcement regimes, a sluggish economic recovery, and several groundbreaking rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 that are certain to reverberate in the year ahead and beyond.

Seyfarth notes that the Supreme Court's decision in Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, handed down last June, has already been cited more than 260 times in federal and state court opinions, and AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion 215 times -- remarkable figures for rulings less than a year old. Dukes, which established a new standard for certifying class actions, and Concepcion , which held that federal arbitration law supersedes limitations imposed by individual states, opened the floodgates to a wave a new case law in class actions, which will continue to evolve in the coming year and impact litigants for years to come.

Released this week, Seyfarth's 8th annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report examines the theoretical and strategic uncertainties stemming from the Supreme Court's employment law rulings in 2011, and the challenges they pose for companies and their defense counsel. The new Report is the most comprehensive yet, examining 976 class action decisions rendered in the past 12 months by federal and state courts, including private plaintiff and government enforcement actions. The number of case rulings covered by Seyfarth climbed 15% over last year's total of 849 -- a direct result of issues raised by Dukes and Concepcion that have loomed over workplace litigation since those landmark decisions last spring.

Seyfarth's Report remains the sole compendium dedicated exclusively to labor and employment class action litigation in the U.S. Regarded as "the definitive source on employment class action litigation" (EPLiC Magazine, Spring 2011), it has become the "go-to" research and resource guide for businesses and corporate counsel facing complex litigation. Corporate counsel routinely depict the prospect of large workplace class-actions as especially worrisome for companies, as well as a significant burden for in-house legal budgets.

Seyfarth Shaw has over 750 attorneys located in 10 offices throughout the United States , including: Atlanta , Boston , Chicago , Houston , Los Angeles , New York , Sacramento , San Francisco and Washington, D.C. , as well as internationally in London . Seyfarth Shaw provides a broad range of legal services in the areas of labor and employment, employee benefits, litigation, corporate and real estate. The firm's clients include over 300 of the Fortune 500 companies, and our practice reflects virtually every industry and segment of the economy. For more information, please visit www.seyfarth.com.

The Utah Court of Appeals has refused to dismiss charges against a couple accused of killing their baby in 2006 by sleeping with him — their second child to die in bed with them.

The appeals judges sided with a lower court in a pair of opinions released Friday concerning the death of 3-month-old Kayson Merrill. The infant died while in bed between his father, Trevor Merrill, and mother, Echo Nielsen, both 28, of South Jordan.

The judges said that while a state medical examiner listed the official cause of death as "undetermined," there was enough evidence that "co-sleeping" caused the baby to suffocate to put the parents on trial.

The parents, whose first child also died while sleeping with them in 2003, have been charged with child-abuse homicide and reckless endangerment. They have pleaded not guilty.

Defense attorneys argued there wasn't enough certainty to go to trial after the medical examiner also cited illness and low birth weight in his report.

California's highest court is hearing a precedent-setting case that could expose California's Roman Catholic dioceses to another round of clergy abuse lawsuits.

The case being argued Thursday before the California Supreme Court involves six brothers in their 40s and 50s who allege they were molested by an Oakland priest during the 1970s. The priest, Donald Broderson, was forced to retire amid abuse allegations in 1993.

The Oakland Diocese maintains the men are barred from suing because they did not do so during the one-year window the state Legislature opened in 2003 for such complaints to be filed.

The brothers' lawyers contend the time limit does not apply to them because they did not make the link between their psychological problems as adults and what happened to them as children until 2006.