The Supreme Court stepped into the fight Monday over a tough Arizona law that requires local police to help enforce federal immigration laws — pushing the court deeper into hot, partisan issues of the 2012 election campaign.

The court's election-year docket now contains three politically charged disputes, including President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and Texas redistricting.

The debate over immigration already is shaping presidential politics, and now the court is undertaking a review of an Arizona law that has spawned a host of copycat state laws targeting illegal immigrants.

The court will review a federal appeals court ruling that blocked several provisions in the Arizona law. One of those requires that police, while enforcing other laws, question a person's immigration status if officers suspect he is in the country illegally.

The case is the court's biggest foray into immigration law in decades, said Temple University law professor Peter Spiro, an expert in that area.

A federal judge in Brooklyn is poised to hear arguments Tuesday over whether the federal government is acting constitutionally in its decisions over the access teenage girls are given to morning-after contraceptive pills.

The arguments come just a week after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled scientists at the Food and Drug Administration and announced that the pills would only be available without prescription to those 17 and older who can prove their age. President Barack Obama said he supported the decision regarding a pill that can prevent pregnancy if taken soon enough after unprotected sex.

The Center for Reproductive Rights and other groups have argued that contraceptives are being held to a different and non-scientific standard than other drugs and that politics has played a role in decision making. Social conservatives have said the pill is tantamount to abortion.

Judge Edward Korman was highly critical of the government's handling of the issue when he ordered the FDA two years ago to let 17-year-olds obtain the medication. At the time, he accused the government of letting "political considerations, delays and implausible justifications for decision-making" cloud the approval process.

The highest court in Massachusetts has sided with The Boston Globe in a battle to release a report and transcript of an inquest into the 1986 shooting death of the brother of an Alabama professor accused of killing three colleagues in a 2010 shooting rampage.

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled Tuesday that the inquest materials can be released, but said Amy Bishop, her family, prosecutors and others can still argue to show "good cause" why the materials should remain sealed.

After Bishop was charged in Alabama, a Massachusetts judge conducted an inquest into her brother's death. A grand jury later indicted Bishop for murder.

The high court outlined new rules for the release of inquest materials, saying they should become public after prosecutors decide whether to bring criminal charges.