The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a federal policy that allows employers to reduce their health insurance expenses for retired workers once they turn 65 and qualify for Medicare.

The justices turned down an appeal by the 35-million-member AARP to undo a rule that essentially allows employers to treat retirees differently depending on their age.

The rules were put into place by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, with the support of labor unions and other groups. They worried that employers would greatly reduce or eliminate health benefits for millions of retirees if they could not take Medicare into account when structuring the health benefit packages they voluntarily provide their retired workers.

The EEOC rule makes clear that employers can spend more on retirees under 65 years of age than those over 65 without running afoul of age discrimination laws.

The EEOC said it proposed the rule in response to a decision in 2000 by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that held that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act requires employers to spend the same amount on health insurance benefits provided Medicare-eligible retirees as those received by younger retirees.

AARP said EEOC violated the intent of Congress when it proposed the rule. But the EEOC said the same age discrimination law allows it to carve out an exemption to preserve the long-standing practice that allows employers to coordinate benefits with Medicare.

The same appeals court upheld the EEOC policy last year

An anti-illegal immigration lawsuit turned out to be much better as a metaphor than as a lawsuit.

When a former leader of Canyon County, Idaho, invoked civil RICO lawsto sue four corporations for hiring illegal immigrants, the move madeheadlines all the way up to The New York Times: The newspaper viewed it as a prism to understand how the immigration issue split the Republican Party.

But an ideologically balanced panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disposed of the complaint last week.Canyon County didn't have standing to argue that the companies' allegedhiring of illegal immigrants unfairly upped the cost of providingpublic services, Senior Judge A. Wallace Tashima ruled.

"We find it particularly inappropriate to label a governmental entity'injured in its property' when it spends money on the provision ofadditional public services," Tashima wrote, "given that those servicesare based on legislative mandates and are intended to further thepublic interest."

Senior Judge William Canby Jr. and Judge Consuelo Callahan joined Tashima.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a $16 billion budget deficitdilemma on his hands. He insists he doesn't want to cut education. Buthe proclaims with equal fervor that he won't raise taxes.

So what's a post-partisan governor to do? Close tax loopholes, of course.

Now one governor's loophole may be another politician's tax increase.But according to two media outlets, Schwarzenegger told the audience ata Pleasant Hill, Calif., budget forum last Wednesday that the state should consider closing tax loop-holes and in his mind that includes the lack of a sales tax on professional services -- including legal services.

"We have to look at the way we are taxing," Schwarzenegger is reportedas saying. "There's whole new economies that are developing,service-oriented economies."

Asked about the comments on Thursday, finance department spokesman H.D.Palmer said the governor was just explaining that there are a lot ofdeficit-eliminating ideas "out there."

"Basically, it was in the context of we ought to have everything on thetable as we ought to be having discussions about them sooner ratherthan later," Palmer said. "But we're not carrying a bill in our backpocket, if that's what you're asking."