Highest Court

Maryland's highest court ruled yesterday that the wife of a permanently comatose veteran cannot have life-sustaining feeding tubes withdrawn from him.The divided Court of Appeals ruled, however, that Deanna Mack can try to gain custody over her husband, Ronald W. Mack, who has been unconscious for nine years. With that designation, she would be able to seek to have him removed to Florida, where life support could be withdrawn.The court sent the case back to Baltimore County Circuit Court, which now must reconsider who should become guardian -- Mrs. Mack, who lives in Florida and once had custody, or Ronald E. Mack, the man's father.

The contentious debate over same-sex marriage was reignited in Maryland yesterday when the state's highest court agreed to hear a case that seeks to overturn a state law that defines marriage as an institution between a man and a woman. The lawsuit is among a handful of similar legal challenges being battled out in high courts around the country as politicians and activists on both sides keep close watch on the outcomes. In Maryland, attorneys will file briefs this fall, and the Court of Appeals plans to hear arguments in the case in late November or early December.

The legality of a secret state list of people suspected -- but never convicted -- of child abuse will be debated today before the state's highest court.The Maryland Child Abuse Registry will come under fire from advocates for teachers and civil rights groups, who will tell the Court of Appeals that being listed for seven years is a penalty that could deny them jobs and should require a circuit court hearing."The danger is that it becomes this McCarthyism sort of blacklist that can be used against you, without you ever having an opportunity to defend yourself," said Christyne L. Neff, a lawyer for the Federation of Maryland Teachers and Public Employees.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. has the unwanted distinction of becoming the first utility in the nation to have power deregulation halted by a court illustrating how the move to give consumers cheaper electricity rates through competition has become complicated and fiercely contested. BGE and the Mid-Atlantic Power Supply Association are just days away from going to battle for yet another time in a courtroom. The state Court of Appeals hearing Thursday is expected to be critical in determining the immediate future of deregulation in Baltimore and its five surrounding counties.

The divisive national debate over same-sex marriage reached Maryland's highest court yesterday with pointed arguments confronting questions of civil rights and who is entitled to the legal rights and emotional benefits of marriage. Attorneys for 19 gay and lesbian plaintiffs framed their argument before the Court of Appeals in classic civil-rights terms, saying Maryland's 33-year-old statute defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman infringes upon their clients' constitutional rights.

LAST MONTH Maryland's second-highest court upheld a Montgomery County judge's decision to send a little boy back to the mother who killed his half-sister. The woman who has been taking care of 2-year-old Cornilous Pixley can't adopt him, the three-judge panel said, exhibiting the courts' longstanding and often excessive bias toward blood relationships.The Pixley case has rightly troubled many Marylanders and child welfare advocates, who know the presumption that a child is better off with a birth parent falls apart when that parent has committed a heinous crime against another child.

Forty years ago today, when African-Americans were referred to as "Negro" in newsprint and "black" or "colored" in conversation, a civil-rights champion from Baltimore was sworn in as the first nonwhite justice on the highest court in the land. "Thurgood Marshall, the first Negro to serve on the Supreme Court, took his seat today as the court convened for a new term," reported a front-page Associated Press story in The Evening Sun and other newspapers across the country. The moment was a key one in the nation's civil-rights timeline, alongside such events as Rosa Parks' defiance on a transit bus and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.-led march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery, Ala. As the South still struggled with its Jim Crow past, and the nation as a whole grappled with racial, class and ideological strife, Marshall joined the court where he had won the landmark 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education case that ended segregation in public schools.

It should come as no surprise that in the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, less than half of Americans surveyed -- 44 percent -- said they approve of theU.S. Supreme Court. Furthermore, three-quarters said they believed individual personal and political views sometimes determine the justices' votes, rather than legal analysis. There was a time when such an assessment would be shocking. Of the three branches of the federal government, the judicial had always been rated far higher in public approval, and in reliability for objectivity, than either the legislative or the executive.

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court rebuffed yesterday the latest effort by the Miami relatives of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez to keep the boy in the United States. It set up a timetable that could lead to his return to Cuba next week. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in Atlanta gave the Florida members of the family five days to try one last maneuver - a plea to the Supreme Court. The relatives said they would move Monday to take the case to the highest court. "This historic case deserves consideration by the Supreme Court," said the relatives' spokesman, Armando Gutierrez of Miami.

The collapse of a soccer goal on a Howard County practice field has led the state's highest court to reconsider more than 150 years of personal injury law, in a case that could significantly improve injured plaintiffs' chances of winning payouts. The case - which began when a crossbar crashed into then-20-year-old Kyle Coleman's face, crushing the bones around his eye - has drawn national attention, as Maryland's unusual legal standard meets its first judicial test in decades. Maryland is one of only four states, plus the District of Columbia, that bar injured people from winning lawsuits if they had any role in an accident - even if a jury finds the defendant in their suit deserved a much greater share of the blame.