Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer faces a Wednesday deadline for asking the U.S. Supreme Court to accept her appeal of a ruling that put on hold key parts of the state's immigration enforcement law.

The Republican governor lost her first attempt to throw out a district court's decision that blocks, among other portions of the law, a provision requiring police, while enforcing other laws, to question the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally, when a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected her motion in April.

Brewer vowed three months ago to take her argument before the nation's highest court, which has discretion on whether to hear her case.

The 9th Circuit said the federal government is likely to be able to prove the law is unconstitutional and likely to succeed in its argument that Congress has given the federal government sole authority to enforce immigration laws.

Brewer's lawyers have argued that the federal government hasn't effectively enforced immigration law and that the state's intent in passing its own regulations was to assist federal authorities, as Congress has encouraged.

They also have argued the district court judge erred by accepting speculation by the federal government that the law might burden legal immigrants and by concluding the federal government would likely prevail.

A federal appeals court has sided with an Atlantic City casino dealer who says he was targeted because he was involved in union organizing.

Bally's Park Place fired Jose Justiniano in 2007. The casino claimed he misused family medical leave time by attending a pro-union rally on a day he took time off to care for his daughter.

Justiniano had been active in casino unionizing efforts.

A judge upheld the firing, but the National Labor Relations Board disagreed and said it was unlawful.

Friday's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., agreed with the NLRB. It noted that Justiniano attended the rally for 20 minutes. It also said Bally's policy on family leave didn't justify the firing.

A message was left seeking comment from an attorney representing Bally's.

A month after the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated murder convictions against two men who had been exonerated, a judge on Monday ordered one of them back to prison but allowed the other to remain free while fighting cancer.

George Gould was sent back to prison while Ronald Taylor, whose lawyer says he has terminal colon cancer, was allowed to remain out on bail. Both men await a new appeal trial connected to their murder convictions in the 1993 fatal shooting of New Haven grocery shop owner Eugenio Deleon Vega.

Gould and Taylor were both sentenced to 80 years in prison for the killing. They filed habeas corpus appeals, challenges to imprisonment that typically come after other appeals fail.

They were freed in April 2010 after 16 years behind bars when Superior Court Judge Stanley Fuger ruled they were victims of "manifest injustice" and declared them "actually innocent." Fuger's ruling came after a key prosecution witness recanted her trial testimony. He ordered both men released.

Prosecutors appealed to the state Supreme Court, which issued a unanimous decision last month saying that Fuger was wrong to overturn the convictions because Gould and Taylor hadn't proven their innocence. The high court ordered a new habeas corpus trial for the two men.

Several alleged victims of tabloid phone hacking in Britain will soon file lawsuits against a second newspaper group, Piers Morgan's former employer Trinity Mirror PLC, their lawyer said Friday.

Mark Lewis said the claims would be filed in "a few weeks," but would not disclose identities of his clients or say precisely when the papers would be presented at court.

Lewis represents the family of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl abducted and murdered by a pedophile in 2002. The revelation a month ago that her voicemail messages had been accessed by the News of the World tabloid while she was still missing outraged British opinion, and triggered a crisis for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

The phone hacking scandal centers on allegations that journalists eavesdropped on private phone messages, bribed police for information and hacked email accounts.

So far the crisis has centered on Murdoch's media empire, leading him to shut down the News of the World and abandon a bid to take over British Sky Broadcasting. Several former executives of the newspaper have been arrested by police investigating the eavesdropping.

But there have also been allegations of hacking by other newspapers. This week Paul McCartney's ex-wife, Heather Mills, claimed in a BBC interview that she was hacked by a Trinity Mirror journalist in 2001.

A developer promising a multi-billion dollar makeover for impoverished north St. Louis won a legal battle Tuesday as the Missouri Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a state law directing tens of millions of dollars of tax credits toward his project.

The seven-member Supreme Court was divided in its reasoning but united in the ultimate result of its ruling, which secures state financing for the developer to assemble and maintain large swaths of land. Eventually, Paul McKee's NorthSide Regeneration LLC wants to build 10,000 homes and millions of square feet of office space in a two-square-mile area north of downtown St. Louis.

A lawsuit by two local residents took issue with a 2007 state law enacted with McKee's project in mind. That law authorizes up to $95 million of tax credits to offset part of the cost of buying and maintaining large amounts of property in impoverished areas. NorthSide Regeneration so far has received about $28 million in tax credits.

Tax credits reduce the amount of state income tax owed by a taxpayer. The lawsuit claimed the credits were similar to getting cash from the state and thus violated the Missouri Constitution by granting public money to a private person or corporation. A Cole County judge ruled against the plaintiffs in March 2010 and the case was appealed to the state Supreme Court.

A month-long notice has begun for massive layoffs in state court clerks' offices.

The Birmingham News reports that court officials say about one-third of the 750 employees in clerks' offices statewide will be laid off effective Aug. 31.

The officials say the layoffs are timed so the 255 workers will be off the state payroll before the court system's new, leaner budget takes effect Oct. 1.

The Jefferson County clerk's offices, which handle more than 75,000 filings per year, will be down to 48 full-time clerks and three temporary workers after the layoffs.

Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb has ordered clerks' offices statewide to be closed to the public for 10 hours weekly starting in August to give the workers time to catch up on processing court documents.