The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that states cannot limit drug manufacturers' use of information about which prescription drugs doctors like to prescribe.

The court voted 6-3 to strike down a Vermont data-mining law aimed at boosting the use of generic drugs by controlling the flow of information about brand-name medications. The ruling imperils similar laws in Maine and New Hampshire.

The laws prevent the sale of information about individual doctors' prescribing records without the doctors' permission.

Pharmacies get that information when they fill prescriptions. They sell the information, without patient names, to data mining companies that, in turn, provide drug makers with a detailed look at what drugs doctors choose for their patients.

Drug company sales representatives can use the information to tailor their pitch to individual doctors.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion that the Vermont law violates the speech rights of the data-mining and pharmaceutical companies.

Kennedy said that law grew out of a desire to control health care costs by increasing the use of generic drugs. But he said, "the state cannot engage in content-based discrimination to advance its own side of a debate."

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said the law should have been upheld as a constitutional regulation of business activity. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan also signed on to Breyer's dissent.

The Supreme Court says that the lab analyst who testifies at a criminal trial must be the one who performed or witnessed the lab tests in question, the latest decision bolstering the constitutional requirement that defendants be able to confront witnesses against them.

In a 5-4 decision Thursday, the court ruled in favor of a New Mexico man convicted of drunken driving who objected when the supervisor of a lab analyst testified about a lab report showing the amount of alcohol in his blood.

The ruling reversed a New Mexico Supreme Court decision in the state's favor.

President Barack Obama's pick to head the Commerce Department criticized a federal labor board's lawsuit against the Boeing Co. on Tuesday over the aerospace giant's decision to locate a new plant in South Carolina.

The nominee, John Bryson, recently stepped down from Boeing's board.

Bryson's comments came at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on his nomination to succeed Gary Locke, whom Obama has named to become U.S. ambassador to China.

At the session, Republicans raised questions about Bryson's views on the environment and criticized the Obama administration for what they said is over-regulation of businesses. They also reiterated their threat to block Senate approval of Bryson's nomination until Obama sends the panel trade pacts with South Korea, Panama and Colombia.

Republicans asked Bryson about the National Labor Relations Board's suit against Boeing, which accuses the aircraft builder of opening a plant in South Carolina in retaliation against union workers in Washington state who went on strike in 2008. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said the NLRB action was "an unprecedented violation of a company's ability" to locate its facilities where it wants to.

Lawyers say a settlement has been reached to allow Joe Patten, known as the "Phantom of the Fox," to live out the rest of his days in his Fox Theatre apartment.

When the Fox in Atlanta was threatened with demolition in the 1970s, Patten led efforts to save it.

The 83-year-old has lived in the apartment beneath the historic theater's dome since 1979, when he signed a lifelong lease.

Last year, trustees of the nonprofit Atlanta Landmarks, which runs the Fox, voted to terminate the lease and Patten's lawyer sued to stop it.

A statement from both sides Tuesday said Patten can continue to live in the apartment under terms of the confidential agreement.

When his ouster became known, many around Atlanta rallied and caused bad publicity for the Fox.

A white suburban woman who staged a hoax kidnapping of her and her daughter and blamed it on two black men before flying to Disney World admitted Tuesday that she fled after swindling a huge sum of money from her ex-boss and an elderly relative.

Bonnie Sweeten told a 911 operator in 2009 that the men had kidnapped her and her 9-year-old daughter and stuffed them in the trunk of a Cadillac. Mother and child surfaced days later at a Disney hotel in Orlando, Fla.

Sweeten, a 40-year-old paralegal from Feasterville, just outside Philadelphia, served a year in prison for the false 911 call. She now faces a likely six to eight years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines for the fraud scheme, which prosecutors pegged at more than $1 million. She diverted more than $700,000 from client settlements and other funds at her law firm and another $280,000 from the relative's Vanguard investment account, prosecutors said.

Sweeten, a PTA mom, used the money to fund a lifestyle beyond the means of her and her second husband, a self-employed landscaper. They lived in a $425,000 house, spent thousands of dollars on infertility treatments and enjoyed a gym membership, trips, restaurant meals and other niceties.

Mounting a large-scale bias claim against a huge company will be more difficult in light of a Supreme Court decision that found no convincing proof of discrimination on which to allow a class action against retail giant Wal-Mart on behalf of as many as 1.6 million women.

All the justices agreed in the decision released Monday that the case couldn't proceed as a class action in its current form, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. By a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the court also said there were too many women in too many jobs at Wal-Mart to wrap into one lawsuit.

While individuals could still pursue their own cases, they would continue with the prospect of costly legal fees and long time frames and ultimately lack the power that would have accompanied the largest sex-discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history.

Two of the named plaintiffs, Christine Kwapnoski and Betty Dukes, vowed to continue their fight, even as they expressed disappointment about the ruling.

"We still are determined to go forward to present our case in court. We believe we will prevail there," said Dukes, a greeter at the Wal-Mart in Pittsburg, Calif.