Powerful public-sector unions are facing another high-profile legal challenge that they say could wipe away millions from their bank accounts and make it tougher to survive.
 
A group of California schoolteachers, backed by a conservative group, wants the Supreme Court to rule that unions representing government workers can't collect fees from those who choose not to join.

Half the states currently require state workers represented by a union to pay "fair share" fees covering bargaining costs, even if they are not members. The justices could decide as soon as next week whether to take the case.

Union opponents say it violates the First Amendment to require fees from nonmembers that may go to causes they don't support. They want the high court to overturn a 38-year-old precedent allowing the fees.

Hundreds of Orange County court cases are being scrutinized amid suspicions that someone was paid to fix DUI and other traffic violations by falsifying court records.

The FBI and county prosecutors are investigating, and about 600 Superior Court cases, some dating to 2006, are going before a judge this month to determine whether they should be reheard, the Orange County Register reported.

The probe involves suspicions that some employees recorded fake sentence reductions and dismissals for drunken driving and misdemeanor traffic cases and in at least one case, falsely made it appear a defendant had served jail time, the Register reported.

No arrests have been made. Representatives for the FBI, the court and the county district attorney's office declined to comment.

On Friday, 110 attorneys and former criminal defendants were summoned to the courtroom of Judge Thomas Borris and told there were errors in the court records. "You are here to convince me there is not a mistake in your case," Borris said.

"There has been a clerk somewhere that was entering false information ... getting cash in exchange for making stuff disappear," said Sheny Gutierrez, one of the attorneys who appeared.

Ramon Vasquez said he was given a work program in 2012 after pleading guilty to driving on a suspended license. The judge said the case would be undone unless he produced documents, the Register said.

A federal appeals court upheld key parts of Texas's strict anti-abortion law on Tuesday, a decision that could leave as few as seven abortion clinics in the nation's second largest state.

The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds requirements that abortion clinics meet hospital-level operating standards, which owners of small clinics say demand millions of dollars in upgrades they can't afford and will leave many women hundreds of miles away from an abortion provider. But the court said abortion clinics failed to prove that the restrictions would unduly burden a "large fraction" of women.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and other conservatives say the standards protect women's health. But abortion-rights supports say the law is a thinly veiled attempt to block access to abortions in Texas, and they promised to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which temporarily sidelined the law last year.

"Not since before Roe v. Wade has a law or court decision had the potential to devastate access to reproductive health care on such a sweeping scale," said Nancy Northrop, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Texas will be able to start enforcing the restrictions in about three weeks unless the Supreme Court steps in and temporarily halts the decision, said Stephanie Toti, an attorney for the center. Only seven abortion facilities in Texas, including four operated by Planned Parenthood, meet the more robust requirements.

The ruling, made by a three-judge panel, is the 5th Circuit's latest decision in a lawsuit challenging some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country.

A federal appeals court struck down one of the nation's toughest abortion restrictions on Wednesday, ruling that women would be unconstitutionally burdened by an Arkansas law that bans abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy if a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat.
   
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with doctors who challenged the law, ruling that abortion restrictions must be based on a fetus' ability to live outside the womb, not the presence of a fetal heartbeat that can be detected weeks earlier. The court said that standard was established by previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

The ruling upholds a decision of a federal judge in Arkansas who struck down the 2013 law before it could take effect, shortly after legislators approved the change. But the federal judge left in place other parts of the law that required doctors to tell women if a fetal heartbeat was present; the appeals court also kept those elements in place.

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge's office was reviewing the decision "and will evaluate how to proceed," office spokesman Judd Deere said Wednesday afternoon.

The ruling wasn't a surprise to Rita Sklar, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, which represented the two doctors challenging the law. She said the case was a waste of taxpayer time, and that the decision leaves medical decisions to doctors and their patients, rather than politicians.

A federal appeals court has ordered the immediate release of an 85-year-old nun and two fellow Catholic peace activists who vandalized a uranium storage bunker, their attorney said Friday.
 
The order came after the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati last week overturned the 2013 sabotage convictions of Sister Megan Rice, 66-year-old Michael Walli and 59-year-old Greg Boertje-Obed and ordered resentencing on their remaining conviction for injuring government property. The activists have spent two years in prison, and the court said they likely already have served more time than they will receive for the lesser charge.

On Thursday, their attorneys petitioned the court for an emergency release, saying that resentencing would take weeks if normal court procedures were followed. Prosecutors on Friday afternoon responded that they would not oppose the release, if certain conditions were met.

After the close of business on Friday, attorney Bill Quigley said the court had ordered the activists' immediate release. He said he was working to get them out of prison and was hopeful they could be released overnight or on the weekend.

"We would expect the Bureau of Prisons to follow the order of the court and release them as soon as possible," he said.

Rice, Walli and Boertje-Obed are part of a loose network of activists opposed to the spread of nuclear weapons. To further their cause, in July 2012, they cut through several fences to reach the most secure area of the Y-12 complex. Before they were arrested, they spent two hours outside a bunker that stores much of the nation's bomb-grade uranium, hanging banners, praying and spray-painting slogans.

In the aftermath of the breach, federal officials implemented sweeping security changes, including a new defense security chief to oversee all of the National Nuclear Security Administration's sites.

Rice was originally sentenced to nearly three years and Walli and Boertje-Obed were each sentenced to just over five years. In overturning the sabotage conviction, the Appeals Court ruled that the trio's actions did not injure national security.

The lines separating government powers have been blurred among Ferguson's court staff, police and prosecutor, raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest, according to a report released Monday by Missouri's judiciary.

The state report examining Ferguson's municipal court system comes as a follow-up to a highly critical U.S. Justice Department report released earlier this year, which asserted that the city's police and courts had been used as a revenue-generating machine.

The Justice Department review was prompted by the fatal shooting last August of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was black, by a white Ferguson police officer.After the federal review, the Missouri Supreme Court in March appointed appeals Judge Roy Richter to take over the Ferguson court and asked court administration experts to take a look at how things were working.

The new report summarizes the observations and recommendations of those unnamed experts, noting several potential conflicts of interest that caused concern.

Until very recently, the report said, court staff were required to report to the police chief. That structure "potentially compromises the separation our government is to have" between the judicial and executive branches, the report said.