Courts in Ohio must now report certain mental health information about people convicted of violent crimes for inclusion in a law enforcement database.

A rule approved by the Ohio Supreme Court requiring that notification took effect Jan. 1. The court devised the form to be submitted to law enforcement after legislation was approved last year.

The law requires judges to report ordering mental-health evaluations or treatment for people convicted of a violent crime or approving conditional release for people found incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity.

The legislation was introduced after a Clark County sheriff's deputy was fatally shot in 2011 by a man with a criminal history who was conditionally released from a mental health institution.

The Supreme Court has turned away a Christian university's attempt to overturn a key part of the Obama administration's health care law.

The justices did not comment Monday in leaving in place a federal appeals court ruling dismissing Liberty University's lawsuit.

Liberty made several arguments in challenging the portion of the health care law that requires most employers to provide health insurance to their workers or pay a fine. The 4th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Richmond, Va., rejected those claims.

The Supreme Court separately is considering whether for-profit corporations can mount religious objections to the law's requirement to include birth control among preventive health benefits.

A federal appeals court refused Friday to toss out court rulings finding that New York City carried out its police stop-and-frisk policy in a discriminatory manner, ending what was likely the city's last chance to nullify the decisions before the arrival of a new mayor who has criticized the tactic.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a five-page order Friday, saying the city could make its arguments to toss out the rulings when its appeal of the decisions of U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin is heard next year.

Last month, the same appeals panel had suspended the effects of Scheindlin's rulings and removed her from the case, saying she misapplied a related ruling that allowed her to take the stop-and-frisk case and made comments to the media during a trial that called her impartiality into question.

The city had argued that the panel's decision to remove Scheindlin meant it should also nullify her rulings.

The Supreme Court will take up a Florida case over how judges should determine if a death row inmate is mentally disabled, and thus ineligible for execution.

The justices said Monday they will review a Florida Supreme Court ruling that upheld the death sentence for a man who scored just above the state's cutoff for mental disability as measured by IQ tests.

Freddie Lee Hall was sentenced to death for killing Karol Hurst, a 21-year-old, pregnant woman who was abducted leaving a grocery store in 1978.

Florida law prohibits anyone with an IQ of 70 or higher from being classified as mentally disabled, regardless of other evidence to the contrary. Hall's scores on three IQ tests ranged from 71 to 80.

In 2002, the Supreme Court banned the execution of mentally disabled inmates. But the 6-3 decision in Atkins v. Virginia essentially left it to the states to determine how to measure mental disability.

Florida is one of nine death penalty states with a strict IQ limit, said Florida Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente. The others are: Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington.

Pariente voted with the majority to uphold Hall's sentence, but noted there is no national consensus on how to determine mental disability.

Hall's case is legally complicated. In 1989, the Florida Supreme Court threw out Hall's original death penalty and ordered a new sentencing hearing. A judge then resentenced Hall to death, but declared he was mentally disabled. That took place before the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling and before Florida passed a law setting the IQ limit.

After the Supreme Court ruled a decade ago that race could be a factor in college admissions in a Michigan case, affirmative action opponents persuaded the state's voters to outlaw any consideration of race.

Now, the high court is weighing whether that change to Michigan's constitution is itself discriminatory.

It is a proposition that even the lawyer for civil rights groups in favor of affirmative action acknowledges a tough sell, at first glance.

"How can a provision that is designed to end discrimination in fact discriminate?" said Mark Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union. Yet that is the difficult argument Rosenbaum will make on Tuesday to a court that has grown more skeptical about taking race into account in education since its Michigan decision in 2003.

A victory for Rosenbaum's side would imperil similar voter-approved initiatives that banned affirmative action in education in California and Washington state. A few other states have adopted laws or issued executive orders to bar race-conscious admissions policies.

A federal court has reversed a Southern California man's conviction in the bludgeoning death of his wife.

The Orange County Register reports that a three-judge panel for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that 75-year-old Marvin Vernis Smith didn't receive a fair trial.

A jury found Smith guilty of murdering his wife 66-year-old Minnie Smith in 2007. She was found dead in their Cypress home, bludgeoned to death in the head and face with a metal fireplace log roller on Dec. 15, 2005.

The court ruled that a jury instruction violated Smith's right to receive proper notice of charges against him and prepare a defense.

The district attorney's office will request that the state attorney general ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision.