President Donald Trump’s lawyers are saying they’ll immediately go to the Supreme Court if an appeals court in New York says his tax returns can be released to state prosecutors.

The lawyers notified the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan Tuesday that they’ll need time to appeal if the 2nd Circuit rules against them.

The appeals court is hearing the challenge to a judge’s ruling tossing out Trump’s challenge to a subpoena of his tax returns since 2011. The records were sought from Trump’s accounting firm for a criminal probe by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit is scheduled to hear oral arguments on Oct. 23. A ruling would be likely soon afterward. A spokesman for Vance declined comment.

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to plunge into the abortion debate in the midst of the 2020 presidential campaign, taking on a Louisiana case that could reveal how willing the more conservative court is to chip away at abortion rights.

The justices will examine a Louisiana law requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The law is virtually identical to one in Texas that the Supreme Court struck down in 2016, when Justice Anthony Kennedy was on the bench and before the addition of President Donald Trump’s two high court picks, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, who have shifted the court to the right.

The court’s new term begins Monday, but arguments in the Louisiana case won’t take place until the winter. A decision is likely to come by the end of June, four months before the presidential election.

The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Louisiana law from taking effect in February, when Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four liberal justices to put it on hold. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were among the four conservatives who would have allowed the law to take effect.

Those preliminary votes do not bind the justices when they undertake a thorough review of an issue, but they often signal how a case will come out.

Roberts’ vote to block the Louisiana law was a rare vote against an abortion restriction in his more than 13 years as chief justice. That may reflect his new role since Kennedy’s retirement as the court’s swing justice, his concern about the court being perceived as a partisan institution and respect for a prior decision of the court, even one he disagreed with.

Aimee Stephens lost her job at a suburban Detroit funeral home and she could lose her Supreme Court case over discrimination against transgender people. Amid her legal fight, her health is failing.

But seven years after Stephens thought seriously of suicide and six years after she announced that she would henceforth be known as Aimee instead of Anthony, she has something no one can take away.

The Supreme Court will hear Stephens' case Oct. 8 over whether federal civil rights law that bars job discrimination on the basis of sex protects transgender people. Other arguments that day deal with whether the same law covers sexual orientation.

The cases are the first involving LGBT rights since the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court's gay-rights champion and decisive vote on those issues. They probably won't be decided before spring, during the 2020 presidential campaign.

The 58-year-old Stephens plans to attend the arguments despite dialysis treatments three times a week to deal with kidney failure and breathing problems that require further treatment. She used a walker the day she spoke to AP at an LGBT support center in the Ferndale suburb north of Detroit.

Bulgaria's highest court says it will look into a petition by the chief prosecutor to revoke the parole by a lower court to an Australian man convicted of fatally stabbing a Bulgarian student during a 2007 brawl.

The Supreme Court of Cassation announced Thursday it will hold a hearing Oct. 23 to review a lower court's ruling to grant parole to Jock Palfreeman. The Australian man had served 11 years of his 20-year prison sentence when a three-judge Court of Appeals panel unexpectedly ordered him freed last Thursday.

The 32-year-old left prison but was transferred to an immigration detention facility to await a new passport from the nearest Australian Embassy, in Athens.

The release of the Australian has sparked angry reactions among Bulgarians, who accused the judiciary of double standards and a leniency toward foreigners.

Palfreeman's lawyer, Kalin Angelov, said he had advised Australian authorities to speed up the passport and put Palfreeman on a plane home.

The new development, however, means that Palfreeman has to remain in custody pending the supreme court's ruling and "for his personal security," according to Deputy Interior Minister Stefan Balabanov.

Dozens of relatives and friends of the slain student rallied Thursday in downtown Sofia to protest Palfreeman's parole.

A divided Ohio Supreme Court has upheld a state law invalidating a Cleveland requirement that public construction contractors hire city residents for a portion of work on projects.

A 2003 Cleveland ordinance mandates that residents must perform 20% of the total hours on public construction projects over $100,000.

The GOP-controlled Legislature approved a bill in 2016 stripping local governments of the ability to impose such residency requirements on contractors. The high court on Tuesday sided with the state in a 4-3 decision.

Mayor Frank Jackson says the city will ask the Court to reconsider the ruling immediately.

Cleveland City Council President Kevin Kelley says the ruling is an attack on "the ability of cities to help life people out of poverty and establish careers.

Supreme Court ruling clear, but Brexit future still murky

The landmark British Supreme Court ruling that Prime Minister Boris Johnson's suspension of Parliament was unlawful did not deal directly with plans for Britain's anticipated departure from the European Union. Brexit will however be top of the agenda in Parliament now that lawmakers have returned.

As things stand, Britain is scheduled to leave the EU on Oct. 31 unless the British government requests an extension and the other 27 EU countries agree to a further delay.

However, Parliament passed a bill earlier this month before Johnson suspended Parliament requiring the prime minister to seek a three-month extension if no withdrawal agreement has been reached with the EU by Oct. 19.

Johnson insists that he is pursuing a deal with the EU, but has repeatedly said that if there is no deal, he will take Britain out of the EU on the scheduled Brexit date rather than request an extension.

For most economists, including those in government and the Bank of England, a no-deal Brexit would trigger a recession as trade barriers, including tariffs, are put up between Britain and the EU. There's also a widespread expectation that there will be gridlock at Britain's ports, and shortages of some food and medicine.

Maurice the rooster can keep crowing, a French court ruled Thursday, as it rejected a complaint from neighbors who sued over noise nuisance.

Maurice’s case and several other lawsuits against the sounds of church bells, cow bells, cicadas and the pungent smells from farms have prompted a national debate over how to protect rural culture from the encroachment of expectations that are more associated with urban areas.

Maurice’s owner, Corinne Fesseau, will be able to keep the rooster on the small island of Oleron, off France’s Atlantic coast, the court decided. The frustrated neighbors are considering an appeal.

The rooster owner’s lawyer, Julien Papineau, told The Associated Press that Fesseau “is happy. She cried when I when I told her the court’s decision.”

Maurice’s dawn crowing is exasperating Fesseau’s neighbors, a retired couple who moved to the island two years ago. They asked the court to make the animal move farther away, or shut up.

Instead, the judge in the southwest city of Rochefort ordered them to pay 1,000 euros ($1,005) in damages to Fesseau for reputational harm, plus court costs.

“That made my clients feel very bad,” their lawyer Vincent Huberdeau said. He said Fesseau intentionally put her chicken coop close to her neighbors’ window and then turned Maurice into a cause celebre for rural traditions, and that the judge went too far in punishing the plaintiffs instead.

Their case also backfired in the court of public opinion, at least locally. More than 120,000 people signed a petition urging authorities to leave Maurice alone ? and a “support committee” made up of roosters and hens from around the region came to support his owner during the trial in July.

“The countryside is alive and makes noise ? and so do roosters,” read one of their signs.

The ruling may spell good news for a flock of ducks in the Landes region of southwest France, where a trial is underway between farmers and neighbors angry over the creatures’ quacks and smell.

Authorities also ruled against residents of a village in the French Alps who complained in 2017 about annoying cow bells, and an effort last year to push out cicadas from a southern town to protect tourists from their summer song also failed.

Since Maurice’s tale came to light, some French lawmakers have suggested a law protecting the sounds and smells of the countryside as part of France’s rural heritage.