Thirty-two states that either allow gay marriage or have banned it asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to settle the issue once and for all.

Fifteen states that allow gay marriage, led by Massachusetts, filed a brief asking the justices to take up three cases from Virginia, Utah and Oklahoma and overturn bans. And 17 other states, led by Colorado, that have banned the practice asked the court to hear cases from Utah and Oklahoma to clear up a "morass" of lawsuits, but didn't urge the court to rule one way or another.

The filing came as a three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled that same-sex marriage bans in Wisconsin and Indiana are unconstitutional. The unanimous decision Thursday criticized the justifications both states gave, several times singling out the argument that marriage between a man and a woman is tradition. There are, the court noted, good and bad traditions.

The experience of Massachusetts — the first state to legalize gay marriage — shows that allowing same-sex couples to wed has only benefited families and strengthened the institution of marriage, said Attorney General Martha Coakley.

A U.S. appeals court on Thursday upheld 10 convictions against an Indianapolis financier but overturned two wire fraud counts, saying the government failed to enter into the record key documentary evidence.

Timothy Durham and co-defendants Jim Cochran and Rick Snow were convicted in 2012 of swindling thousands of investors out of $200 million. Durham was convicted on 12 counts and sentenced to 50 years; Cochran was convicted on eight counts and sentenced to 25 years; Snow was convicted on five counts and sentenced to 10 years.

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago rejected most of the appeals but overturned two involving the transfer of $250,000 and $50,000.

The appeals court said the government's failure to enter the documentary evidence "was clearly an oversight, but the mistakes leaves a crucial gap in the evidence in those counts." It said the government used single-page printouts to establish the wire transfers were made in furtherance of the fraudulent scheme.

A federal appeals panel in Denver on Monday suggested that a partisan stalemate in Congress may mean that Republicans in Kansas and Arizona will be unable to force federal election officials to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements on voter registration forms.

Those two states sued the Elections Assistance Commission after the agency refused to adjust the federal voting registration forms it distributed in Kansas and Arizona to reflect those states' requirements that voters present documentation that proves they are citizens.

A lower court found the commission needed to include the more stringent state language. But on Monday, a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted that Congress has not approved a single commissioner to sit on the commission in three years.

The judges were skeptical the agency could decide whether to change the federal form, one way or the other, without any commissioners.

A federal appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit challenging the San Francisco Sheriff's Department's policy of forbidding male guards to work in the women's jail.

The San Francisco Chronicle says a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the policy constituted sex discrimination which the city had failed to demonstrate was absolutely necessary.

The 9th Circuit decision overruled the finding of a federal judge who dismissed the lawsuit after finding that excluding male guards made sense as a way to protect the safety and privacy of female inmates.

The policy was adopted in 2006. The Chronicle says the 35 guards who sued the next year included women who alleged it had increased their work loads and men who said it cost them overtime and possible promotions.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled against Birmingham-based HealthSouth Corp. on Friday in a legal dispute linked to the accounting fraud that rocked the rehabilitation company more than a decade ago.

The justices rejected an appeal filed by HealthSouth in a legal fight involving its one-time auditing company, Ernst & Young.

Shareholders filed a complaint on behalf of HealthSouth blaming Ernst & Young for failing to detect the $2.6 billion accounting scam that occurred under former CEO Richard Scrushy, who was acquitted of criminal charges in 2005. A civil court later held him responsible for the swindle.

An arbitration panel ruled against HealthSouth in a complaint aimed at making Ernst & Young share responsibility for the fraud, and HealthSouth appealed to Jefferson County Circuit Court. That court sided with the auditor, and HealthSouth appealed again.

The Supreme Court, in a decision written by Justice James Main, upheld the ruling against HealthSouth. The justices said there was no evidence the arbitration decision against HealthSouth was fundamentally unfair or that the panel engaged in any misconduct.

Evidence showed HealthSouth inflated its earnings by some $2.6 billion from the late 1990s through the early 2000s, when the scheme was uncovered. Fifteen HealthSouth employees pleaded guilty and jurors convicted one other.

Scrushy blamed everything on underlings but later served time in federal prison after being convicted in a bribery scheme involving former Gov. Don Siegelman, who remains in prison in Oakdale, La.

Scrushy, who maintains his innocence to all charges, now lives in Texas and sometimes lectures about corporate fraud.

The state Supreme Court has ruled that state dashboard cameras can't be withheld from public disclosure unless they relate to pending litigation.

Five of the high court's members said Thursday that the Seattle Police Department wrongly used a state statute as a blanket exemption to the state's public records act when it denied providing dashboard camera videos to a reporter with KOMO-TV. Their ruling overturns a 2012 King County Superior Court judge's ruling that said the department could withhold the videos for three years.

The majority awarded KOMO attorney fees and sent the case back to the lower court.

Four justices argued that the statute was clear that that the recordings should not be released to the public until completion of any criminal or civil litigation.