The Supreme Court has refused to get involved in a long-running dispute on the continued existence of the Yankton Sioux Tribe and the extent of its lands in South Dakota.

The justices on Monday let stand several rulings involving the tribe, including an appeals court decision saying the reservation covers more than 30,000 acres, which is mostly land the federal government holds in trust for the tribe and individual tribal members.

The high court also rejected an appeal from the tribe to block the transfer of two federal recreation areas along the Missouri River to the state of South Dakota.

The cases are Daugaard v. Yankton Sioux Tribe, 10-929; Southern Missouri Recycling v. Yankton Sioux Tribe, 10-931; Hein v. Yankton Sioux Tribe, 10-932; and Yankton Sioux Tribe v. Daugaard, 10-1058.

The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a massive sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart on behalf of women who work there.

The court ruled unanimously that the lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cannot proceed as a class action, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The lawsuit could have involved up to 1.6 million women, with Wal-Mart facing potentially billions of dollars in damages.

Now, the handful of women who brought the lawsuit may pursue their claims on their own, with much less money at stake and less pressure on Wal-Mart to settle.

The justices divided 5-4 on another aspect of the ruling that could make it much harder to mount similar class-action discrimination lawsuits against large employers.

Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion for the court's conservative majority said there needs to be common elements tying together "literally millions of employment decisions at once."

But Scalia said that in the lawsuit against the nation's largest private employer, "That is entirely absent here."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court's four liberal justices, said there was more than enough uniting the claims. "Wal-Mart's delegation of discretion over pay and promotions is a policy uniform throughout all stores," Ginsburg said.

Business interests lined up with Wal-Mart while civil rights, women's and consumer groups have sided with the women plaintiffs.

William Chandler III never realized his young man's dream of becoming a university professor, yet he has managed to pass on plenty of lessons to students of American law and business.

Chandler, 60, is retiring this week as head of Delaware's Court of Chancery, which rules over corporate law in a state that is the legal home to more than half of all publicly traded U.S. companies, including about two-thirds of the Fortune 500.

Chandler's decision to join a Silicon Valley-based law firm, where he will focus on advising corporate clients and working behind the scenes on litigation strategy, comes after 26 years on the bench, including eight years as a vice chancellor on the five-member court and 14 as chancellor.

But Chandler, who also served as a Superior Court judge before being appointed a vice chancellor, never envisioned himself wearing a black robe.

After obtaining his law degree from the University of South Carolina and clerking for a federal judge in Wilmington, Chandler went to Yale University law school with his eye on a master's degree and a dream of becoming a professor.

The Supreme Court is entering a $40 million dispute between an energy company and Montana that could turn on the experiences of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The justices said Monday they will hear an appeal from PPL Montana of a state court decision ordering the company to pay $40 million in rent for placing its hydroelectric dams in riverbeds owned by the state.

The ownership of the waterways turns on whether they were navigable when Montana became a state in 1889. Both the company and the state base part of their argument on the journey of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark more than 200 years ago.

The Supreme Court will let two West Virginia residents revive a lawsuit against Bayer AG over its anti-cholesterol drug Baycol, which was withdrawn from the market in 2001 after reports of a severe and sometimes fatal muscle disorder.

The high court on Thursday unanimously agreed to let Kevin Smith and Shirley Sperlazza's class-action lawsuit against Bayer go forward.

The 8th U.S. Court of Appeals had thrown out their lawsuit out after a federal judge overseeing multistate litigation against Bayer refused to let other West Virginians file a similar class-action lawsuit against the corporation.

The high court said that decision was incorrect.