The Arizona Supreme Court late Wednesday dismissed the League of Arizona Cities and Towns' constitutional challenge to budget law provisions on immigration enforcement and other topics.

The immigration enforcement provisions toughen and expand existing prohibitions on providing services to illegal immigrants. Other challenged provisions deal with development impact fees and building codes.

All were included in a bill approved during a summer special session largely devoted to the state's ongoing budget crisis.

The legislation took effect Nov. 24.

The league argued that enactment of the provisions was unconstitutional because they fell outside budget-related topics listed for special session action and because unrelated legislation was packaged in one bill.

The Supreme Court's brief order said the case, which had been filed directly with the high court, can be started over in a lower court.

The league "did not establish circumstances sufficient to render it proper for the original special action petition to be brought to this court," the order said.

A new case filed in trial court would have to pass through several layers of the state court system before any constitutional questions are resolved. That process would take at least several months and possibly a year or two.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to accept a special-action lawsuit filed directly with the state high court by the Central Arizona Water Conservation District.

The district is the state entity that runs the Central Arizona Project aqueduct system and related water projects.

Those projects include one to store water underground. According to the district's lawsuit, at least some of the money swept from the fund was paid to Arizona by Nevada for water storage.

General Growth Properties Inc. said Wednesday that it has filed its reorganization plan, and its lenders have agreed to restructure about $9.7 billion in shopping mall mortgage loans, more than previously planned.

Last month the mall operator, which earlier this year filed the largest U.S. real estate bankruptcy case in history, said its lenders had agreed to restructure some $8.9 billion in loans.

The real estate investment trust and about 166 regional shopping centers and subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 protection in April. The company had about $27 billion in debt piled up at the time.

General Growth fell victim to an aggressive expansion during the height of the real estate boom and was unable to service it when credit markets dried up during last year's financial crisis.

General Growth, based in Chicago, is the second-largest U.S. mall operator. The shopping mall loans that are being restructured cover 92 regional shopping centers, office properties, community centers and related subsidiaries.

The company's reorganization plan includes full payment of all undisputed claims against emerging debtors for pre-petition goods and services.

General Growth said the Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York is set to confirm its reorganization plan on Dec. 15. If the company obtains all of the necessary approvals for its plan and meets the necessary conditions, General Growth anticipates the regional shopping centers, office properties community centers and other subsidiaries associated with the loans will be out of bankruptcy before year's end.

The Supreme Court is weighing whether Florida homeowners must be compensated because a beach-widening project cost them their exclusive access to the Gulf of Mexico.

The justices heard argument Wednesday in a case with potentially widespread implications for coastal communities nationwide that confront beach erosion.

The court is being asked to rule for the first time that a court decision can amount to a taking of property. The Constitution requires governments to pay "just compensation" when they take private property for public use.

Six homeowners in Florida's panhandle are challenging a Florida Supreme Court decision that changed their "beachfront property to beach view property," their lawyer, D. Kent Safriet, told the court.

The Missouri Supreme Court overturned a man's death sentence Tuesday because his attorney failed to question the character of a murder victim who had child pornography on his computer.

The high court acknowledged in its unanimous ruling that character evidence about murder victims typically is barred. But when relatives of victim Ralph Lape Jr. testified about his generous character during the sentencing phase of Mark Gill's murder trial, defense attorneys should have countered by highlighting the smut on Lape's computer, the Supreme Court said.

Had Gill's attorneys done so, the Supreme Court said, jurors may have been less inclined to sentence him to death for the July 2002 kidnapping, robbery and shooting. The Supreme Court sent the case back to a lower court for a new sentencing hearing.

Cape Girardeau County Prosecutor Morley Swingle said he would again seek the death penalty for Gill.

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a California death row inmate who was convicted in the gruesome murders of four people in 1983.

The justices said Monday they would not review an appeals court ruling that upheld the murder conviction and death sentence of Kevin Cooper.

Cooper came within a few hours of execution in 2004 before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in to order genetic testing on a hair and a bloody shirt found at the murder scene that Cooper said would prove he was not the killer.

The San Francisco-based appeals court later backed a district judge's ruling that the test results did not show Cooper's innocence.

Cooper, who has long maintained his innocence, had escaped from a California state prison. He was convicted of the murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, both 41, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and Christopher Hughes, her friend. They were stabbed and hacked repeatedly with a hatchet and buck knife. Joshua Ryen, then 8, survived a slit throat.