Pennsylvania's highest court is weighing how to resentence prisoners who were given automatic life sentences as juveniles.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling outlaws mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles.

There are nearly 500 juvenile lifers in Pennsylvania, half from Philadelphia.

The state Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday morning in a pair of representative cases.

The defendants are Ian Cunningham, serving life for a second-degree murder conviction in Philadelphia, and Qu'Eed Batts, convicted of first-degree murder in Northampton County.

Cunningham's case concerns lifers who have exhausted direct appeals but want to invoke the Supreme Court decision in new filings.

In the Batts case, lawyers will debate what term is appropriate for those sentenced to life without parole.

The dispute over a northeast Pennsylvania city's attempt to crack down on illegal immigrants is back before a federal appeals court Wednesday.

The six-year case involving Hazleton returns to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals because of a recent Supreme Court ruling.

The city rules would fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and deny business permits to companies that employ them. A companion piece requires tenants to register with City Hall and pay for a rental permit.

But they've all been on hold since a federal judge struck them down, and the federal appeals court affirmed the decision, saying they usurp the federal government's power to regulate immigration.

Now a mixed decision from the Supreme Court in a related case in Arizona is sending the Pennsylvania case back to court.

An appellate court on Tuesday tossed out Attorney General Pam Bondi's request for a decision to uphold the proposed privatization of 29 South Florida prison facilities.

A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal rejected her plea to reverse a lower court's ruling against privatization, saying Bondi couldn't appeal on her own after her client, the Department of Corrections, declined to do so. The panel unanimously dismissed the case because Bondi was not a party.

"A party who suffers an adverse judgment in Circuit Court has the right to appeal, but nonparties whose rights have not been adjudicated have no right of appeal," Chief District Judge Robert Benton wrote for the court.

Leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature had urged Bondi to appeal after Gov. Rick Scott decided the department, which is part of his administration, would not.

One of Bondi's assistants acknowledged during oral argument last month that it was too late to carry out the privatization due to the expiration of a budget provision authorizing the plan. Nevertheless, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Glogau asked the appellate court to issue a ruling upholding the privatization provision that would set a precedent for future budgets.

A Pennsylvania state Supreme Court justice who is fighting political corruption charges has lost a request for her fellow justices to intervene in her criminal court case and require that an out-of-county judge preside over it.

The state Supreme Court issued the one-page order denying the request from suspended Justice Joan Orie Melvin on Tuesday. Melvin had sought to keep Allegheny County judges from hearing her case, complaining that one Allegheny County judge is married to a key prosecution witness, Lisa Sasinoski.

Melvin also had objected to a local district judge presiding over her preliminary hearing, saying the case may be too complex. Melvin asked her colleagues on the state Supreme Court to intervene after an Allegheny County judge denied her initial request.

A state appeals court rejected a challenge to New York's year-old same-sex marriage law Friday, ruling closed-door negotiations among senators and gay marriage supporters including Gov. Andrew Cuomo did not violate any laws.

The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court in Rochester ruled against gay marriage opponents who argued that Republican state senators violated New York's open meeting rules ahead of the law's passage last year.

The marriage law was given final legislative approval by the state Senate after weeks of intensive lobbying and swiftly signed by Cuomo, making New York the largest state to legalize same-sex weddings. Same-sex couples began marrying by the hundreds on July 24, 2011, the day the law became official.

"The court's decision affirms that in our state, there is marriage equality for all, and with this decision New York continues to stand as a progressive leader for the nation," Cuomo said after the court's ruling.

New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms said Cuomo and another gay marriage supporter, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, met behind closed doors with the Senate's Republican majority in violation of the open meeting law.

A New Yorker accused of trying to start what prosecutors called "a mini al-Qaida cell" pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges of conspiracy and providing material support to a terrorist organization.

An indictment had alleged that Wesam El-Hanafi pledged loyalty to al-Qaida and sought to teach the terror group how to evade detection on the Internet after he went to Yemen in 2008.

The Brooklyn-born El-Hanafi admitted in federal court in Manhattan to having conversations in 2009 with a co-defendant about "seeking out additional contacts within al-Qaida." The co-defendant, Sabirhan Hasanoff, pleaded guilty to similar charges earlier this month.

Prosecutors had portrayed the two U.S. citizens as a new, more sophisticated breed of homegrown terrorist: Both had earned college degrees and landed well-paying jobs before trying to share their expertise with al-Qaida.