State Supreme Court

WASHINGTON -- Giving homosexuals a right to join one of America's most revered organizations -- the Boy Scouts -- the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled yesterday that it is illegal to bar gay males as Scouts or as troop leaders.The Boy Scouts of America said it would appeal the unanimous decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was the first ruling against the Scouts by any state's highest court.The decision is binding only in New Jersey. Even so, it was a major symbolic breakthrough for gay rights advocates, who have long stressed the importance to their cause of gaining access to the nation's mainstream institutions -- including marriage and military service.

WASHINGTON -- In a major defeat for the campaign to gain a right for homosexual couples to marry, the Hawaii Supreme Court has reinstated a law that allows a marriage license only to a man and a woman.Hawaii was one of two states where gay rights advocates had been hoping to establish same-sex marriage as a right under the state constitution. That effort ended with the state highest court's decision, issued late Thursday.The issue of same-sex marriage remains open in Vermont, where the state Supreme Court held a hearing on a similar test case nearly 13 months ago. That court has set no deadline for a final ruling.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has struck an extraordinary bargain, agreeing to nominate a prominent conservative selected by a Republican senator to an important appeals court post, in exchange for the confirmation of one of his nominees to the same court, Senate and administration officials said yesterday.In exchange for nominating the Republican choice, Judge Barbara Durham, the current chief justice of the Washington state Supreme Court, to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the Republicans agreed to stop blocking the nominations of several Clinton nominees, including that of Professor William Fletcher.

Betsy Cohen remembers the days when she and other lesbians taunted heterosexuals with the words, "breeder! breeder!"Times have changed. Ms. Cohen now has a child of her own, as does Ann Pongracz, her partner.The Baltimore couple is part of what many gays and lesbians call the "Gayby Boom" -- the growing number of births and adoptions by homosexuals, who are forging long-term partnerships and becoming parents through artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood or adoption.At home, Ms. Cohen is "Mommie" and Ms. Pongracz is "Momma."

WASHINGTON -- Four hours before going on the air with a story about unclean meat, CBS-TV got permission yesterday from a Supreme Court justice to show film taken secretly inside a South Dakota packing plant.Justice Harry A. Blackmun set aside a state judge's order that would have barred the show "48 Hours" from including a two-minute videotape as part of a story titled "Bum Steer."The justice relied on the long-standing view of the court that judges should almost never stop the press from publishing a story and that any punishment for harm done by a story should be imposed afterward, not before.

WASHINGTON -- In a major constitutional victory for longtime members of Congress, a federal judge yesterday struck down a Washington state law that limited the number of terms that the lawmakers may serve.Judge William L. Dwyer of Seattle ruled on a case filed by House Speaker Thomas S. Foley, a 15-term Democrat from Spokane. The judge accepted all the major challenges raised by opponents of term limits.Judge Dwyer said the term limits add unconstitutional qualifications for those who want to run for Congress, interfere with candidates' free-speech rights and voters' election rights, and discriminate against incumbents in Washington state and their supporters.

WASHINGTON -- The still-spreading campaign to limit the terms of members of Congress met another defeat in court yesterday as the Arkansas Supreme Court nullified the idea, moving the issue onto a faster track toward the U.S. Supreme Court.The state Supreme Court, with only one justice dissenting, said the Arkansas constitutional amendment approved by the state's voters in November was a move to ban "a broad category of persons from seeking election to Congress."By making past service a disqualification, the state court said, the amendment adds a restriction that is not in the Constitution and could be put there only by a federal constitutional amendment.

HONOLULU, Hawaii -- This island paradise, where multiculturalism is a way of life and not just a slogan, could become the first state to legalize marriage between people of the same sex -- or at least to offer marital benefits for homosexuals who register as domestic partners.Whether by sanctioning gay marriage or by passing the nation's first statewide domestic partnership act, Hawaii would lead the way in this fundamental redefinition of family, which some see as a sweeping expansion of civil rights and others see as undermining traditional values.

DENVER -- A Denver district judge ruled yesterday that a ballot issue passed by Colorado voters banning gay rights laws violates the United States Constitution's guarantee of equal protection.In light of the ruling, groups that had been calling for a boycott of Colorado said they were suspending their campaign, which had cost the state about $38 million in lost convention business.Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton said the state would appeal the ruling to the Colorado Supreme Court, but the court LTC has already indicated that it would almost certainly strike down the measure, which was passed by voters a year ago.The referendum, known as Amendment 2, which was never enforced, would have repealed laws in Denver, Boulder and Aspen prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals in jobs and housing, and it would have forbidden the passage of any such law in the state.

WASHINGTON -- Colorado's highest state court, in a wide-ranging victory for gay people, ruled 6-1 yesterday that the U.S. Constitution gives homosexual men and women a clear right to seek new laws to protect them from bias.In a decision that very likely will mean the end of an amendment put into the Colorado constitution last year to forbid all legal protection for gays, the state Supreme Court defined a new right the U.S. Supreme Court has never recognized.That is a right for lesbians and gay men to take part in all of the processes of government "on an even footing with others," without being discriminated against because of their sexual lives.

DENVER - A Texas judge allowed parents yesterday to begin retrieving more than 400 children taken by the state during a raid on a polygamist sect's compound in April. District Judge Barbara Walther issued the order after the state Supreme Court ruling last week that found Texas authorities had overreached when they moved the children into protective custody. On Friday, Walther refused to sign an agreement between the state and lawyers for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that would have provided for the children's release.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- For Vincent Scala, the debate over the civil confinement of sexual predators pits his personal beliefs as "a card-carrying member of the ACLU" against his family ties. In June, Scala's cousin, Concetta Russo-Carriero, was stabbed to death as she walked to her car in the parking garage of a White Plains, N.Y., shopping mall. The homeless man arrested and charged with the crime was released in 2003 after spending nearly 24 years in prison for rape and being repeatedly denied parole.

Alexandru Paleologu, 86, a leading Romanian intellectual, senator and diplomat, died Thursday in Bucharest after a long illness. He had been awarded a top prize for diplomatic excellence by President Traian Basescu the previous day. Mr. Paleologu served briefly as Romania's ambassador to France after the fall of communism in 1989 but resigned in a falling-out with President Ion Iliescu over his belief that Mr. Iliescu had not distanced himself sufficiently from...

SAN FRANCISCO - The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously yesterday that San Francisco's mayor overstepped his authority by issuing same-sex marriage licenses. By a 5-2 vote, the court also declared the more than 4,000 marriages of gay and lesbian couples that had been sanctioned by the city "void from their inception and a legal nullity." Opponents of gay marriage celebrated the opinion, which sharply rebuked Mayor Gavin Newsom's actions as "unauthorized and unlawful." State law requires marriage to be between "a man and a woman."

CONCORD, N.H. - Just as meddling with Social Security is considered a forbidden political third rail in presidential politics, New Hampshire has one of its own - personal income and sales taxes. Neither has ever been levied here, and candidates who have tried to buck the tradition have been buried by it. But three-term Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen touched the third rail after her 2000 re-election by proposing a sales tax, which failed, and she is still standing tall enough to be the likely Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, without a primary challenger, in November.

YORK, PA. - Ruling that the prosecution of nine white men for the ambush killing of a black minister's daughter in 1969 has been delayed long enough, a Pennsylvania judge ordered yesterday that the murder trial of Mayor Charlie Robertson and his co-defendants go forward. Defense attorneys had argued that charges should be dropped because the 32-year delay in prosecution had violated the defendants' due-process rights and because fading memories, lost evidence and the deaths of potential witnesses made it impossible for them to get a fair trial.

WASHINGTON - Very late in the Florida election dispute, members of the state Supreme Court raised the notion of a total statewide recount as the proper solution to awarding the state's 25 electoral votes and hence the presidency and that it was probably too late to conduct it. The same point had been made by Circuit Court Judge N. Sanders Sauls in his sweeping rejection of Vice President Al Gore's bid to have up to 14,000 "undervotes" in Palm Beach and...

THE FLORIDA RECOUNT has started -- again -- thanks to a decision yesterday by the Democratic state Supreme Court that said discarded ballots in 67 counties must now be examined. Meanwhile, the Republican Florida Legislature is poised to bypass the legal wrangling over vote-counting and name its own slate of presidential electors early next week. You can see where this is headed: a bitter, partisan power struggle between Florida's highest court and its Legislature over the laws of that state.

WASHINGTON - A unanimous Supreme Court put on hold yesterday the Florida Supreme Court ruling that legalized manual recounts of presidential ballots - but gave the state court a chance to shore up its ruling. The justices, after a weekend of closed-door discussions, shied away from a final ruling on Texas Gov. George W. Bush's challenge to the state supreme court ruling of Nov. 21. Bush's appeal has sought judicial ratification of his certified Florida victory. Instead, the nine justices reached a compromise that did little, if anything, to advance the claims of Bush or Vice President Al Gore in the fight for Florida's 25 electoral votes, vital to secure the presidency.

WASHINGTON - In a wide-ranging inquiry into the legal side of the presidential election dispute, the Supreme Court took turns yesterday denouncing and defending a Florida court ruling that prolonged the feud. After a 90-minute hearing, before an audience peopled with Washington's political and legal elite, the court gave no hint of when - or even whether - it would decide Texas Gov. George W. Bush's appeal. But the lively hearing showed the justices to be deeply conscious that deadlines were approaching for a solution in Florida and that the court either had to act soon or defer to the process in state courts in which Vice President Al Gore is seeking to gather enough late-counted votes to win. Signs of a deep division among the justices emerged, perhaps complicating the task of finding a consensus.