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.

Marion "Suge" Knight's lawyer argues that a murder case against the former rap music mogul should be dismissed because one of the men he allegedly ran over earlier this year didn't identify him in court.

Attorney Matt Fletcher contends in a motion filed before a hearing Friday that murder, attempted murder and hit-and-run charges filed against the Death Row Records co-founder should be thrown out based on the testimony of a man seriously injured in January. Knight has pleaded not guilty to running over Cle "Bone" Sloan and another man who died from his injuries.

Sloan refused to identify Knight while testifying during a preliminary hearing last month, but gave detectives a lucid account after being struck by Knight's pickup and said he started a fight in the parking lot of a Compton burger stand in late January.

A response filed by prosecutor Cynthia Barnes points to Sloan's statements to detectives and other evidence to support their case, including Knight's unique nickname, "Suge."

Fletcher contends that is not enough.

"There is nowhere in this transcript that Mr. Sloan ever identifies Marion Knight, the defendant, as a murderer," Fletcher wrote. "There is nowhere in the entire transcript that Mr. Sloan even identifies Marion Knight as a driver of the red truck in question; the red truck that hit the victims."

The 50-year-old Knight is charged with running over the two men outside a Compton burger stand. Fletcher has said his client was fleeing an ambush. A trial in the case has been scheduled for July 7.

Knight is also scheduled for a hearing in a separate robbery case that a judge delayed. The former rap mogul told deputies he was too sick to come to court, but Superior Court Judge Ronald Coen said he would order Knight forcibly brought to court on Friday if necessary.

Pandora Media Inc. lost a court hearing Thursday in a dispute with music publishing rights group BMI over royalty rates, but the Internet streaming leader said it will appeal.

Pandora said it's confident it can win later since the appeals court — the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York — last week ruled in its favor in a case against the other major publishing group known as ASCAP.

Thursday's ruling would force Pandora to pay 2.5 percent of its revenue to songwriters and music publishers, up from 1.75 percent. Last week's appeals court ruling allowed Pandora's 1.85 percent rate to ASCAP to stay intact.

If the appeal fails, Pandora says its costs could rise by 0.8 percent of revenue, which would have amounted to about $1.7 million last quarter.

BMI called the ruling a victory for the more than 650,000 songwriters, composers and publishers it represents.

A man who eluded police for 48 days after allegedly shooting to death a state trooper and wounding another is due in court for a preliminary hearing which could decide whether his case goes to county court for trial.

A Pennsylvania district judge must decide Monday whether there are sufficient grounds to send the case against Eric Frein, 31, to county court.

Frein has been charged with shooting Cpl. Bryon Dickson and Trooper Alex Douglass Sept. 12 outside their state police station in northeastern Pennsylvania. He was captured Oct. 30 at an abandoned airplane hangar in the Pocono Mountains.

Authorities say Frein confessed to what he described as an assassination designed to "wake people up" and result in a change in government. Dickson was killed and Douglass was wounded.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Frein was identified as a suspect shortly after the shootings when a passer-by found his vehicle partially submerged in a small pond near the state police station.

The manhunt, with drew a large police force to the rural area, frightened residents as there were numerous reported sightings of Frein, an expert marksman. A team of federal marshals performing a systematic search stumbled across him about 30 miles from the scene of the shooting and were able to arrest him.

The Supreme Court has declined to disturb the conviction of San Francisco hedge fund founder Doug Whitman on insider trading charges.

The justices on Monday rejected Whitman's appeal of his 2012 conviction for securities fraud and conspiracy.

Prosecutors said Whitman made nearly $1 million between 2006 and 2009 by receiving inside tips about the earnings of public companies. Whitman had testified that he was careful to avoid inside trades. He was sentenced to two years in prison.

Whitman argued that the trial court gave the jury flawed instructions and improperly excluded the testimony of a witness.

A conservative gadfly lawyer who has made a career of skewering Democratic administrations is taking his battle against the National Security Agency's telephone surveillance program to a federal appeals court.

Activist attorney Larry Klayman won the first round in December, when U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a Republican appointee, ruled that the NSA's surveillance program likely runs afoul of the Constitution's ban on unreasonable searches. The government appealed.

In court filings in preparation for Tuesday's argument, the Justice Department told three Republican-nominated appeals judges that collecting the phone data is of overriding and compelling importance to the nation's security.

Former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden revealed the phone data collection effort a year and a half ago, triggering a debate over privacy rights and surveillance.

In New York, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit recently heard arguments in an appeal of a judge's opinion that found the surveillance program legal.

The three appeals judges in the Washington case have generally come down on the government's side on national security issues.