With Chicago election officials printing mayoral ballots that include Rahm Emanuel's name, it's up to the Illinois Supreme Court to decide whether voters will actually see him among their choices during next month's election.

The state's highest court agreed Tuesday to decide whether Emanuel can run for mayor, and the justices ordered election officials not to print any ballots without his name until they can rule.

The action bought valuable time for the former White House chief of staff, who a day earlier was kicked off the ballot by an appeals court because he didn't live in the city for a year before the Feb. 22 election. The state Supreme Court said it would expedite the matter but gave no specific time frame.

With less than a week to go before the first early ballots are cast, a number of potential scenarios loomed, including the possibility that Emanuel would have to resort to a write-in campaign or wage a desperate bid to take the matter to federal court.

Emanuel, who had been the heavy favorite to lead the nation's third-largest city, pressed ahead with confidence and said he was doubling his campaign by adding more stops to his already busy schedule.

Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel asked Illinois' highest court Tuesday to overturn a ruling that knocked him off the ballot for Chicago mayor, calling the decision "squarely inconsistent" with previous rulings about the state's election law.

Emanuel's lawyers filed the request a day after an appeals court booted him off the Feb. 22 ballot because he did not live in Chicago for a year before the election.

In the appeal, Emanuel's attorneys called Monday's decision "one of the most far-reaching election law rulings ever" issued in Illinois. They said the ruling imposes "a new, significant limitation" on ballot access.

There was no immediate word on whether the high court would hear the case, or when the justices would decide whether to accept it.

Time was running short because the Chicago Board of Elections said it needed to begin printing ballots Tuesday to be prepared for early voting, which starts Monday.

Officials said they would start printing the ballots without Emanuel's name among the choices.

Just hours after Monday's ruling, the campaign to replace retiring Mayor Richard M. Daley began to look like an actual race.

For months, three of the main candidates struggled for attention while Emanuel outpolled and outraised them, blanketed the airwaves with television ads and gained the endorsement of former President Bill Clinton, who came to town to campaign for Emanuel.

The Supreme Court says a credit card company legally increased the interest rate on a man's card without telling him.

The high court on Monday ruled for Chase Bank USA and against James A. McCoy.

McCoy complained that Chase increased his interest rate due to his delinquency or default, and applied that increase retroactively. He says credit card regulations make that illegal because Chase did not notify him until after the increase went into effect.

The lower court had thrown out his lawsuit. Justice Sonia Sotomayor agreed, saying the Federal Reserve Board's interpretation of the regulations said Chase did not have to inform him of the rate increase.

Congress changed the law in 2009 to require credit card companies to give a 45-day notice before raising interest rates.

A federal judge has rejected a challenge to Iowa's judicial nominating and retention system.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pratt on Wednesday granted Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller's request to dismiss the lawsuit filed by four conservative activists who claimed the system gives too much power to attorneys who elect members of the state's Judicial Nominating Commission. That panel recommends judicial appointments to the governor.

The lawsuit was filed after voters ousted three state Supreme Court justices for their role in a decision that legalized same-sex marriage in Iowa.

Iowa voters approved the nominating and retention system in 1962 but an attorney for the activists who filed the lawsuit claims it gives too much power to seven commission members who are elected by licensed attorneys.

In his decision, Pratt says the argument is "fatally flawed" and does not demonstrate a constitutional violation.

Authorities say two Mississippi lawyers, who are also brothers, have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and bank fraud.

U.S. Attorney John M. Dowdy says in a news release that 57-year-old Charles H. Evans Jr. and 53-year-old Jon Christopher Evans pleaded guilty Tuesday. Both are from Jackson.

Prosecutors say the brothers secured mortgages from banks by providing false. They contracted to purchase tracts of land, then falsely subdivided tracts on paper and created phony records and shell companies to secure mortgages on the individual plots from multiple banks.

The Supreme Court is preparing to hear arguments on whether Anna Nicole Smith's estate should get part of the fortune left behind by her elderly Texas billionaire husband.

Lawyers for the deceased former Playmate plan to tell justices Tuesday her estate deserves some of the $1.6 billion estate of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall.

Marshall's will left nearly all his money to his son, E. Pierce Marshall, and nothing to Smith, who said her husband of 14 months promised to leave her more than $300 million.

But a federal appeals court sided with a Houston jury that said Marshall was mentally fit when he left his estate to his son and nothing to Smith.