Hundreds of Orange County court cases are being scrutinized amid suspicions that someone was paid to fix DUI and other traffic violations by falsifying court records.

The FBI and county prosecutors are investigating, and about 600 Superior Court cases, some dating to 2006, are going before a judge this month to determine whether they should be reheard, the Orange County Register reported.

The probe involves suspicions that some employees recorded fake sentence reductions and dismissals for drunken driving and misdemeanor traffic cases and in at least one case, falsely made it appear a defendant had served jail time, the Register reported.

No arrests have been made. Representatives for the FBI, the court and the county district attorney's office declined to comment.

On Friday, 110 attorneys and former criminal defendants were summoned to the courtroom of Judge Thomas Borris and told there were errors in the court records. "You are here to convince me there is not a mistake in your case," Borris said.

"There has been a clerk somewhere that was entering false information ... getting cash in exchange for making stuff disappear," said Sheny Gutierrez, one of the attorneys who appeared.

Ramon Vasquez said he was given a work program in 2012 after pleading guilty to driving on a suspended license. The judge said the case would be undone unless he produced documents, the Register said.

A federal appeals court upheld key parts of Texas's strict anti-abortion law on Tuesday, a decision that could leave as few as seven abortion clinics in the nation's second largest state.

The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds requirements that abortion clinics meet hospital-level operating standards, which owners of small clinics say demand millions of dollars in upgrades they can't afford and will leave many women hundreds of miles away from an abortion provider. But the court said abortion clinics failed to prove that the restrictions would unduly burden a "large fraction" of women.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and other conservatives say the standards protect women's health. But abortion-rights supports say the law is a thinly veiled attempt to block access to abortions in Texas, and they promised to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which temporarily sidelined the law last year.

"Not since before Roe v. Wade has a law or court decision had the potential to devastate access to reproductive health care on such a sweeping scale," said Nancy Northrop, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Texas will be able to start enforcing the restrictions in about three weeks unless the Supreme Court steps in and temporarily halts the decision, said Stephanie Toti, an attorney for the center. Only seven abortion facilities in Texas, including four operated by Planned Parenthood, meet the more robust requirements.

The ruling, made by a three-judge panel, is the 5th Circuit's latest decision in a lawsuit challenging some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country.

A federal appeals court ruling has cleared the way for discount contact lens retailers to drop prices while a legal battle is waged between the state of Utah and manufacturers who want to impose minimum prices on their products.
 
The decision handed down from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver on Friday comes after three of the nation's largest contact lens manufacturers sued to halt a hotly contested law.

Supporters, including Utah-based discount seller 1-800 Contacts, say the newly enacted legislation bans price fixing for contact lenses. But opponents, including Alcon Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson and Bausch & Lomb, say it's a brazen overreach that allows discount sellers to violate interstate commerce regulations and skirt industry price standards.

Utah's attorney general has said the companies are wrongly driving up prices, and the law is a legitimate antitrust measure designed to enhance competition and help customers. Attorney General Sean Reyes' office didn't have a comment on the decision Friday.

The ruling allows the law to go into effect while a legal battle over the measure works its way through the courts. The appeals court did agree to fast-track the case and new briefs are due in the case later this month.

Donna Lorenson, a spokeswoman for Alcon, says the company is "extremely disappointed" and maintains the law violates interstate commerce rules.

In a victory for Native American tribes, an appeals court ruled Thursday that states cannot use negotiations for a Native American casino to challenge the federal government's decisions to recognize a tribe and set aside land for it.

An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said states have to use a separate process to contest those decisions and have a window of six years to file their challenge.

The decision removes the uncertainty many tribes faced about their land status after a smaller 9th Circuit panel reached a different conclusion, said Joe Webster, a partner with the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Hobbs Straus Dean & Walker who was closely watching the case.

"This is certainly an important decision for tribes," he said.

The ruling came in a fight between California and the Humboldt County-based Big Lagoon Rancheria over the tribe's plan for a Las Vegas-style casino.

The tribe accused the state in a lawsuit of failing to negotiate a casino deal in good faith, and largely won its case in federal district court. A call to the state attorney general's office for comment about Thursday's ruling wasn't immediately returned.

The U.S. Supreme Court landed the final blow against an Arizona law that denied bail to immigrants who are in the country illegally and are charged with certain felonies, marking the latest in a series of state immigration policies that have since been thrown out by the courts.

The nation's highest court on Monday rejected a bid from metro Phoenix's top prosecutor and sheriff to reinstate the 2006 law after a lower appeals court concluded late last year that it violated civil rights by imposing punishment before trial.

While a small number of Arizona's immigration laws have been upheld, the courts have slowly dismantled most of the other statutes that sought to draw local police into immigration enforcement.

"At this point, we can say that was a failed experiment," said Cecillia Wang, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who led the challenge of the law. "Like the rest of the country, Arizona should move on from that failed experiment."

Voters overwhelmingly approved the no-bail law as the state's politicians were feeling pressure to take action on illegal immigration. It automatically denied bail to immigrants charged with a range of felonies that included shoplifting, aggravated identity theft, sexual assault and murder.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear an important case about whether states must count only those who are eligible to vote, rather than the total population, when drawing electoral districts for their legislatures.

The case from Texas could be significant for states with large immigrant populations, including Latinos who are children or not citizens. The state bases its electoral districts on a count of the total population, including non-citizens and those who aren't old enough to vote.  

But those challenging that system argue that it violates the constitutional requirement of one person, one vote. They claim that taking account of total population can lead to vast differences in the number of voters in particular districts, along with corresponding differences in the power of those voters.

A ruling for the challengers would shift more power to rural areas and away from urban districts in which there are large populations of immigrants who are not eligible to vote because they are children or not citizens. Latinos have been the fasting growing segment of Texas' population and Latino children, in particular, have outpaced those of other groups, according to census data.

"And because urban areas are more Democratic, the ruling could help Republicans," said Richard Hasen, an expert on election law at the University of California-Irvine law school.

The Project on Fair Representation is funding the lawsuit filed by two Texas residents. The group opposes racial and ethnic classifications and has been behind Supreme Court challenges to affirmative action and the federal Voting Rights Act.