A candidate for the North Carolina Supreme Court pleaded guilty more than nine years ago to trespassing and driving while impaired.

The Charlotte Observer reports Republican Chris Anglin was stopped by police in Greensboro in January 2009 and charged after he registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.14, nearly twice the legal limit. The following September, he pleaded guilty.

That December, Anglin was charged with attempted breaking and entering and pleaded guilty to second-degree trespassing. On Wednesday, he attributed both cases to struggles with alcohol in his 20s.

Both incidents happened while Anglin was a student at Elon University School of Law. He said that in 2010, he sought help for his drinking problem with a lawyer-assistance program. He said he's since gotten sober.

Anglin criticized N.C. Republican Party Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse for emailing Anglin's arrest records to a listserv the GOP maintains. Anglin has feuded with the GOP since he switched party affiliation and entered the Supreme Court race.

Woodhouse has previously said Anglin "will be treated like the enemy he is," and Anglin said the GOP is acting desperate "by sending something out that occurred almost a decade ago."

Republicans have described Anglin as a Democratic plant in the race and Woodhouse said as much Wednesday, writing that "Democrats had one of their own with a very questionable background pretend to be a Republican, so they could try and fool the voters."

Republican legislators responded earlier this summer to Anglin's campaign by passing a law, which was later overturned as unconstitutional, that would have banned Anglin from listing his Republican Party on the ballot even though his opponents could list their parties.

Anglin is one of three candidates seeking a place on the court. The other candidates are Barbara Jackson, a Republican who's seeking re-election, and Anita Earls, a Democrat and longtime civil rights lawyer.

A federal appeals court says Texas must make improvements to abuse investigations within its foster care system and make sure workers have manageable caseloads, but the court also struck down dozens of other measures ordered by a judge.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the ruling Thursday in a years-long case focused on children in the state’s long-term care. U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack had ordered sweeping changes earlier this year. Jack’s order followed a December 2015 opinion in which she ruled the system unconstitutionally broken and said children labeled permanent wards of the state “almost uniformly leave state custody more damaged than when they entered.”

The appeals court judges said they understood Jack’s frustration with the state failing to fix problems and agreed that “remedial action is appropriate.”

But the judges said her order went “well beyond” what’s necessary for constitutional compliance.

So while the appeals court said Texas was “deliberately indifferent” to the risk of harm posed by high caseloads and ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to come up with guidelines for manageable caseloads, the judges nixed Jack’s instruction for all sexualized children — either aggressor or victim — to be placed in a single-child home.

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Friday ordered election officials to not count votes cast for a ballot measure that would have imposed the strictest term limits in the country on state legislators.

In a 4-3 ruling disqualifying the proposed initiative, the court said that thousands of signatures submitted by supporters were invalid and should not have been counted. The court did not rule on part of the lawsuit challenging the wording of the proposed amendment.

The court agreed with a special judge it had appointed to review the petitions who said thousands of signatures should be tossed out for not complying with requirements for paid signature-gatherers.

"Not only did Issue 3's supporters fail to properly collect the signatures required by law, but the measure would have stuck Arkansans with the most restrictive term limits in our country - a step in the wrong direction," Randy Zook, president of the state Chamber of Commerce and the head of the campaign against the measure, said.

An attorney for Term Limits Arkansas, the group backing the measure, said the court relied on "hyper technical paperwork violations" to invalidate the signatures.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday criticized a court order that allows for the questioning of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on how a citizenship question came to be added to the 2020 census.

The court's actions, the attorney general said in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation, represent an improper attempt "to hold a trial over the inner-workings of a Cabinet secretary's mind."

With his remarks, Sessions waded into a simmering legal dispute that may ultimately be resolved by the Supreme Court, which solidified its conservative majority with the recent addition of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The conflict centers on a judge's order that Ross may be deposed by lawyers challenging whether a question on citizenship legally can be included on the census. Plaintiffs in two lawsuits, including more than a dozen states and big cities, have sued, saying the question will discourage immigrants from participating in the census.

The judge, Jesse M. Furman, has said Ross can be questioned about how the citizenship inquiry was added to the census because he was "personally and directly involved in the decision, and the unusual process leading to it, to an unusual degree." A New York-based federal appeals court backed Furman's ruling last week, but Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a temporary stay.

Manhattan’s district attorney dropped part of the criminal sexual assault case against Harvey Weinstein on Thursday after evidence emerged that cast doubt on the account one of his three accusers provided to the grand jury.

The development was announced in court Thursday with Weinstein looking on.

The tossed charge involves allegations made by one of the three accusers in the case, Lucia Evans, who was among the first women to publicly accuse Weinstein of sexual assault.

In an expose published in The New Yorker one year ago Wednesday, Evans accused Weinstein of forcing her to perform oral sex when they met alone in his office in 2004 to discuss her fledgling acting career. At the time, Evans was a 21-year-old college student.

Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon told the judge that prosecutors wouldn’t oppose dismissal of the count in the case involving Evans. She insisted the rest of the case, involving two other accusers, was strong.

“In short, your honor, we are moving full steam ahead,” she said.

Weinstein’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, told the judge he believed Evans had lied both to the grand jury and to The New Yorker about her encounter with Weinstein. He also said he believed a police detective had corruptly attempted to influence the case by keeping a witness from testifying about her misstatements.

Former FIFA executive committee member Worawi Makudi is at the Court of Arbitration for Sport challenging his ban for forgery ahead of a Thailand soccer federation election.

Makudi said outside the court on Thursday he was "very confident. I didn't do anything wrong."

The former Thai federation president appealed against a 3 1/2-year ban by FIFA that expires in April 2020. He was also fined 10,000 Swiss francs ($10,100).

FIFA's ethics committee found him guilty of forgery, falsifying documents, and not cooperating with investigators. Makudi was alleged to have altered federation statutes before his 2013 re-election campaign.

He was convicted in a Bangkok criminal court, though said on Thursday that case was resolved in his favor.

"You know very clearly that the court in Thailand already decided I won the case, OK?" he said.

Makudi was a long-time ally of Qatar's Mohamed bin Hammam when sitting on FIFA's ruling committee for 18 years until 2015. He was voted out by Asian federations.