State lawyers tell the Ohio Supreme Court that using a budget bill to privatize state prisons didn’t violate a constitutional provision holding bills to a single subject.In a brief filed today, Ohio said the state’s budget, like any family’s, involves both revenues and expenses — not just appropriations.

The filing comes in a legal dispute with the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association. The prison workers’ union filed suit over privatization in 2012, contending that lawmakers extended beyond the single-subject rule when they used the budget to sell a state prison and turn others over to private operators.

An appellate court agreed, finding in October there was no “rational relationship” between the privatization plan and state spending.The state says privatization saved Ohio money and so had “obvious budget connections.”

A federal judge from Alabama accused of hitting his wife in an Atlanta hotel room can have a misdemeanor battery charge dismissed if he completes a court program that includes domestic violence intervention.

U.S. District Court Judge Mark Fuller will spend up to 24 weeks in the pre-trial diversion program, which also includes an alcohol and substance abuse assessment. Fulton County State Court Chief Magistrate Judge Stephanie Davis on Friday allowed Fuller to enter the program and ordered him to report back to the court on Oct. 14.

Officers were called to the Fullers' room in August at the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta, where a police report said Kelli Fuller answered the door in tears and had cuts on her mouth and forehead. She was treated by paramedics but refused to be taken to the hospital. The room smelled of alcohol, according to the report.

Kelli Fuller told police her husband became violent when she accused him of cheating, pulling her hair, throwing her to the ground, and kicking her. Mark Fuller told officers he threw her to the ground to defend himself after she threw a drink glass at him while he watched television.

During the brief court hearing Friday, Mark Fuller spoke only to answer a question on whether he had agreed to enter the program. He left without speaking with reporters but, in a statement later issued through his attorney, Fuller said he looks forward to addressing the concerns of the court and "hopefully" returning to the bench.

A Tennessee man has pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery of the signatures of a district court judge and an officer of the U.S. District Court.

U.S. District Judge Pamela L. Reeves set sentencing for 49-year-old Scott Thibault of Maryville for Dec. 1 in Knoxville. Thibault entered the plea Wednesday.

Prosecutors say Thibault has also agreed to plead guilty to one-count information of use of the mail to defraud.

Prosecutors say Thibault falsely represented himself as an attorney in an adoption case and forging the name of U.S. District Judge Thomas Varlan on the documents.

Thibault told the court he obtained at least $400,000 from the victims to further his scheme to defraud and obtain money.

A dispute over a Montana wind farm's potential to harm nearby nesting eagles and other birds should be heard in California, the Montana Supreme Court said Friday, in an opinion that deals a legal setback to the project's developers.

The legal row over the Rim Rock wind farm near Cut Bank began last year, when San Diego Gas & Electric accused developer NaturEner of concealing the possibility that eagles and other birds could be harmed by the 126-turbine project.

NaturEner, whose parent company is based in Spain, filed a competing lawsuit in Montana. Its attorneys alleged SDG&E was trying to get out of an unfavorable contract and using the eagle issue as an excuse.

The Rim Rock wind farm is near an area with seven golden eagle nests and Montana's densest concentration of ferruginous hawks. Under federal law, a take permit is required for activities that could injure, kill or otherwise harm protected birds such as eagles.

SDG&E alleges federal officials recommended to NaturEner that the wind farm needed such a permit. NaturEner has denied the claim.

Montana District Judge Brenda Gilbert ruled in May that the case should be heard in Montana because of Rim Rock's importance to the economies of Glacier and Toole counties. She also issued an injunction requiring the utility to pay NaturEner nearly $2 million a month.

The years-long fight between farm organizations and animal rights activists over laws prohibiting secretly filmed documentation of animal abuse is moving from state legislatures to federal courts as laws in Utah and Idaho face constitutional challenges.

Half of U.S. states have attempted to pass so-called ag-gag laws, but only seven have been successful. Among them are Idaho, where this year's law says unauthorized recording is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine, and Utah, whose 2012 law makes it a crime to provide false information to gain access to a farm. Both states now face separate but similarly worded lawsuits that say the measures violate federal statutes offering whistleblower protections and free-speech guarantees.

Farm organizations and livestock producers say ag-gag laws are aimed at protecting their homes and businesses from intruders, and some plan to use social media to assure the public they have nothing to hide. But animal rights groups, free-speech activists and investigative journalists want to throw out the laws because they say the secrecy puts consumers at higher risk of food safety problems and animals at higher risk of abuse.

The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected a prosecutor's effort to reinstate the conviction of an HIV-positive man accused of passing the virus to another man, ruling Wednesday that the statute under which he was convicted was ambiguous.

Groups supporting gay rights said the ruling affirms the need for government to respect the personal and private decisions of consenting adults regarding sexual intimacy. The prosecutor contended the case was never a civil rights issue, but rather about protecting the public from people who know they're infected but practice unprotected sex anyway.

The high court affirmed a Court of Appeals decision that reversed the attempted first-degree assault conviction of Daniel James Rick, 32, of Minneapolis, who learned he was HIV positive in 2006. He had consensual sex several times starting in early 2009 with a man identified in court papers as D.B., who tested positive that October.

A jury acquitted Rick in 2011 under the first part of a Minnesota statute that applies to cases involving sex without first informing the other person that the defendant has a communicable disease. But it convicted him under another section that the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday applies only "to the donation or exchange for value of blood, sperm, organs, or tissue and therefore does not apply to acts of sexual conduct."