The full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California today declined -- by an apparent vote of 21-4, though we cannot be certain about the numbers -- to take up the challenge to Proposition 8's ban on same-sex marriage in the state.

That leaves the lower court ruling in place, which declared it unconstitutional, and clears the way for supporters of Prop 8 to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, a step that the backers can be counted on to take. For now, the appeals court put a 90-day hold on the effect of today's order, which means that no same-sex marriages can be performed for at least the next 90 days. 

As soon as the Prop 8 backers file their papers asking the Supreme Court to take the case, that will extend the stay for as long as it takes the justices to dispose of the case. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, we wouldn't learn about that order until October at the earliest, and the case probably wouldn't be argued until February or March of 2013.

If the Supreme Court declines to hear the case -- and again, we wouldn't hear of the court's order on that until the fall -- then the stay on the Prop 8 ruling would evaporate, and same-sex marriages could again proceed in California.

It's also quite likely that the Supreme Court will be asked in the coming term to hear a related issue, the challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. That's the law that bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages in the states where they are legal.

So the justices might agree to hear both cases, or one of them, or neither. It the Supreme Court takes up just one of the cases, it's more likely to be the DOMA issue, because that involves striking down an act of Congress, which would be a strong factor in urging the court to hear it.

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens took a poke at the controversial Citizens United decision Wednesday night and said his former colleagues have probably already had second thoughts about it.

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens speaks at a lecture presented by the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, Ark., Wednesday, May 30.

The 2010 decision paved the way for the SuperPACs to which wealthy individuals, corporations, and labor unions can give unlimited amounts of money to support or oppose candidates.  Stevens was among the justices who dissented in the court's 5-4 ruling.

In remarks prepared for delivery at the University of Arkansas, Stevens predicted that the court will soon be forced to issue rulings that will undermine a key part of the Citizens United ruling -- that the First Amendment "prohibits the suppression of political speech based on the speaker's identity," including the fact that the speaker is a corporation.

The court's decision left undecided whether the same free speech right applies to foreign corporations. In due course, Stevens said, the court will be called upon to decide that question, forcing it to craft an exception "that will create a crack in the foundation of the Citizens United majority opinion."

"The court must then explain its abandonment of, or at least qualify its reliance upon, the proposition that the identity of the speaker is an impermissible basis for regulating campaign speech.  It will be necessary to explain why the First Amendment provides greater protection of some non-voters than to that of other non-voters," he said.

Stevens said a recent Supreme Court action may also undermine Citizens United.  In January, the justices upheld a lower court ruling that said two non-citizens could not make political contributions to political candidates.  It's therefore now settled, Stevens said, "that the identity of some speakers may provide a legally acceptable basis for restricting speech" through contributions.

Unlike most retired Supreme Court justices, John Paul Stevens has not been reluctant to criticize the rulings of his former colleagues.

Oh, not that kind.

Take a good look at the familiar front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, because it's about to go under wraps.

Starting next week, workmen will begin putting up scaffolding along the entire West front of the building, the side that faces the U.S. Capitol, according to a court official. After the scaffolding is completed, a huge fabric covering will be stretched over the framework, concealing both the scaffolding and the building.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

A dentil molding from the facade of the Supreme Court is damaged after a piece of the marble detail fell from the building in Washington, D.C., November 28, 2005. The marble chunk, above the allegorical figure representing "Order," fell about an hour before the court opened without causing any injuries.

However, the fabric will be imprinted with an image of the court building, so it will be like looking at a huge sketch or photo, reminding passersby of the splendid building hidden beneath.

The reason for this extensive work goes back to one morning in November 2005, when a chunk of marble about the size of a loaf of bread came loose from the building and crashed onto the steps below. No one was hurt. 

The piece came from a section just above the figures carved into marble in the triangular pediment over the steps. A short time later, a wire mesh surrounding that area was installed as a temporary measure to prevent any further pieces from falling. But conservators decided the building needed more extensive work to avoid any similar disasters.

During the roughly two years that the covering will be in place, mortar in the 80-year-old building will be examined and replaced, and carved elements on the marble facade will be strengthened as needed.

Based on their comments during this morning's oral argument, a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices appear to be prepared to uphold part of Arizona's controversial immigration law, which would allow some of the law currently blocked by lower courts to be enforced.

Even some of the court's liberals seemed to find no strong objection to the most controversial part of the law, which requires local police to check on the immigration status of anyone they detain or arrest.

The state appeared to have a tougher time with two other provisions of the law that are now blocked -- making it a state crime to have no federal immigration papers and making it a state crime for an illegal immigrant to look for work. Neither is a federal crime.

In the first criminal case directly related to the 2010 Gulf oil disaster, FBI agents have arrested a former engineer for BP, who's accused of destroying evidence requested by federal authorities investigating the spill.

Kurt Mix, age 50, of Katy, Texas, is charged with obstruction of justice. Prosecutors say he deleted text messages from his cell phone that he'd been instructed to keep to aid in the investigation.

Mix was a "drilling and completions project engineer for BP" and one of his tasks was to estimate the amount of oil leaking from the well after the blowout. 

"BP sent numerous notices to Mix requiring him to retain all information concerning Macondo, including his text messages," prosecutors say.

But they say in October of 2010, after hearing that the files of his text messages were going to be collected, he deleted more than 200 messages from his phone.

"The deleted texts, some of which were recovered forensically, included sensitive internal BP information collected in real-time as the Top Kill operation was occurring, which indicated that Top Kill was failing," the Justice Department says.

According to court documents, in one message, he wrote, "Too much flow rate -- over 15,000." 

He and other engineers had concluded internally that the effort to cap the well was unlikely to succeed if the flow rate was greater than 15,000 barrels of oil per day.

"At the time, BP's public estimate of the flow rate was 5,000 BOPD -- three times lower than the minimum flow rate indicated in Mix's text," the government says.

Video trickster James O'Keefe has posted a video showing a man walking into a Washington, DC polling place last Tuesday during the local primary and claiming to be Eric Holder.

In the video, the man gives Holder's name and address (which is bleeped out). The poll worker asks the man to sign the voter sheet, but the man says he has left his ID in the car. "You don’t need it," the poll worker says. "It’s all right. As long as you’re in here, you’re on our list, and that’s who you say you are, you’re okay."

The man declines to sign, says he's going to get his ID, and leaves.

O'Keefe's group, Project Veritas, offers the video to rebut Attorney General Eric Holder's position that there's little evidence of in-person voter fraud to justify changing state laws to require government issued photo IDs at the polls. The video includes excerpts from a recent NBC News interview with Holder on the subject.

In response, a Justice Department official says "about the only time we get concrete evidence of voter fraud is when someone pulls a stunt like this."

By the way, a federal official says the man in the video did not commit voter fraud, because he never signed the voter sheet and -- therefore -- never received or cast a fraudulently obtained ballot.

The Justice Department has filed the letter it was directed to write by a panel of appeals court judges in Texas about the authority of federal courts to strike down acts of Congress. The letter states well-settled law about the issue, but in doing so, it manages to make many of the points the Obama administration has stressed in litigation over the health-care case.

During oral argument Tuesday over a lawsuit challenging a part of the health law, Judge Jerry Smith of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas sought the following: "A letter stating what is the position of the attorney general and the Department of Justice in regard to the recent statements by the president, stating specifically and in detail, in reference to those statements, what the authority is of the federal courts in this regard in terms of judicial review."

The letter in response, signed by Attorney General Eric Holder, says, "The longstanding, historical position of the United States regarding judicial review of the constitutionality of federal legislation has not changed."

"The power of courts to review the constitutionality of legislation is beyond dispute," he says, citing cases from Marbury v. Madison in 1803 up to the present day. 

But, Holder notes, acts of congress are presumed to be constitutional.

"It falls to the party seeking to overturn a federal law to show that is is clearly constitutional," he writes. What's more, "The Supreme Court has often acknowledged the appropriatness of reliance on the political branches' policy choices and judgments."

"The President's remarks," Holder concludes," were fully consistent with the principles described herein."

The first legal challenge to President Obama's controversial recess appointments flopped today, when a federal judge tossed it out on procedural grounds.

A business group, the National Association of Manufacturers, tried to slip the challenge into an existing lawsuit contesting decisions by the National Labor Relations Board.

It was an apt place to challenge the move, the group said, because the the president made three recess appointments to the NLRB during a Senate break. 

The White House said the appointments were within a president's executive power. But many Republicans claimed they was unconstitutional, because the Senate was called briefly into session each day during the recess.

On Friday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the legal challenge came too late in a place where it didn't belong. The group "attempted to shoehorn a challenge" in to a pending case about an entirely different issue involving the validity of a recent NLRB rule.

"The court declines this invitation to take up a political dispute that is not before it," she wrote in a brief decision.

This won't be the last word, however. Other groups have said they will go to court to challenge the most recent appointments.

The date for the primary election in Texas has slipped again -- this time to May 29th.

The panel of three federal judges in charge of re-drawing boundaries for congressional and legislative districts issued an order Thursday setting the date and providing July 31 as the date for a runoff.

The primary was originally set for Super Tuesday -- March 6.  But a legal battle over the district boundaries forced a move to April 3.  Now the election has been delayed once more, and it could be shifted yet again if further court fights erupt.

Here's the background.

Because of a population boom in Texas, the 2010 census gives the state four more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Nearly all that growth was among the Latino and African-American populations -- groups that tend to vote for Democrats. But the state legislature drew up a new map of congressional districts that virtually assured three of the new seats to Republicans.

Because Texas has a history of discriminating against minority groups at election time, the state was required to seek permission to use the new map, a process known as pre-clearance under the Voting Rights Act.  A federal court in Washington will rule shortly on the pre-clearance issue. 

In the meantime, a separate legal battlefront was opened when civil rights groups sued the state in federal court in Texas. A three-judge panel deemed the state map insufficient and drew up a map on its own to be used on an interim basis, just for this year's election.

But the U.S. Supreme Court, acting on an extremely fast schedule, ruled in late January that the court-drawn map failed to fully consider the legislature's concerns in adjusting district boundaries. This week, the Texas court issued revised maps and ordered new dates for the primary election.

The courts are not finished with the Texas map issue, because the Washington, D.C., panel of judges has yet to rule on the pre-clearance issue. Democrats and minority groups in Texas, who believe the revised map gives Republicans too many of the new seats, are hoping a ruling will keep their legal fight alive.

The Supreme Court has confirmed that Justice Stephen Breyer, his wife and several family friends were the victims of a knife-wielding robber at the Breyer vacation home on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean.

A court official says that around 9:00 pm ET Thursday night, Justice Breyer, his wife and house guests were robbed by one suspect, wearing a mask and wielding a knife, who got away with about $1,000 in cash.

No one was hurt in the incident.

Previously filed financial disclosure forms as well as articles and tourist websites acknowledge that Justice Breyer is a regular vacationer to the island and has owned a home there for quite some time.

The Nevis police department is investigating and says there are no suspects or arrests at this time.

Local news reports as well as the police acknowledge other robberies and break-ins in the area around the same time.

It is the third time in recent memory that a Supreme Court justice has been the victim of a crime.

Back in 2004, Justice David Souter suffered minor injuries when he was mugged by a group of young men while jogging.

And in 1996, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had her purse snatched near the Kennedy Center while walking with her husband and daughter. She was not hurt in the incident.

A federal appeals court has rejected Rick Perry's request for an emergency order to put his name on the primary election ballot in Virginia.

Following the reasoning of the federal judge who rejected Perry's request last week, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond said Perry "had every opportunity to challenge the various Virginia ballot requirements at a time when the challenge would not have created the disruption that this last-minute lawsuit has."

The Supreme Court, today's ruling says, has repeatedly urged that judges not "upend the orderly progression of state electoral processes at the eleventh hour."

Allowing Perry to pursue his complaint now, about the process for gathering signatures on petitions to qualify for the ballot "would not be fair to the states or to other candidates who did comply with the prescribed process in a timely manner, and it would throw the presidential nominating process into added turmoil," the court said.

"I am pleased with the Fourth Circuit ruling and that Virginia's orderly election process will be able to move forward," said Virginia’s attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, who defended the state’s balloting system in court.

NBC's Carrie Dann has the response from Perry campaign spokesman Ray Sullivan:

"We are proud to fight for the rights of Virginia voters to be able to make a meaningful decision and cast their ballots for the candidate of their choice. This appellate ruling only affirms the trial court's assertion that the state's process of printing ballots should not be disrupted. An orderly ballot access process is important, but of little significance if viable candidates are unconstitutionally kept off the ballot. The trial judge's holding that the statute is unconstitutional is not disturbed. Gov. Perry is weighing options for appeal."

UPDATED 4:45 p.m. ET

A federal judge on Friday tossed out a challenge to the constitutionality of Virginia's law governing access to the state's primary election ballot.

The ruling is a setback for the four Republican candidates who failed to qualify for the state's March 6th primary -- Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Jon Hunstsman, and Rick Santorum. 

The Virginia law contains the nation's strictest requirement for number and geographic origin of signatures.  And it specifies that petitions to gather signatures can be circulated only by Virginia residents, denying candidates the opportunity to use out-of-state volunteers.  

Federal Judge John Gibney said Friday that they challengers have a point and might have prevailed on their claim that the residency requirement for circulating petitions is unconstitutional. But he said they waited too long to raise it.
Knowing full well what the state's requirements where, he said, they nonetheless circulated petitions in accordance with the state law. "They waited until after the time to gather petitions had ended and they had lost the political ballot to be on the ballot," Gibney said.

"In essence, they played the game, lost, and then complained that the rules were unfair," he said. Some legal experts predicted just this outcome, because a long-standing legal doctrine bars lawsuits under such circumstances.

What's more, the judge said, the state is far along in the election process. Ordering the state now to put the challengers on the ballot "would deprive Virginia of its rights not only to conduct the primary in an orderly away but also to insist that a candidate show broad support," Gibney wrote in a legal opinion accompanying his order.

Gibney discounted the challenge to the number of signatures the state requires. But he said the candidates have a better argument regarding the ban on allowing non-Virginia residents to circulate petitions.

That provision, the judge said, "directly infringes on the First Amendment rights of candidates, voters, petition circulators, and political parties" to spread their message.

Lawyers for the four candidates said nothing after the ruling about a possible appeal, and their odds of prevailing diminish each day as deadlines come and go to prepare for the primary.

Professor Richard Hasen of the University of California at Irvine Law School, who predicted in December that the judge would conclude the claim was filed too late, said the decision at least provides a foundation if other candidates chose to take up the fight in a future election year.

"This Pyrrhic victory for Perry will help future candidates in Virginia, assuming it is upheld on appeal," Hasen said.