The Supreme Court restored federal judges Monday to their traditional central role in criminal sentencing.

In two decisions, the court said U.S. district judges have broad discretion to impose what they think are reasonable sentences, even if federal guidelines call for different sentences.

One decision was particularly emphatic in saying judges are free to disagree with guidelines that call for much longer sentences for offenses involving crack cocaine than for crimes involving an equivalent amount of cocaine in powdered form.

Monday's decisions include an important racial dimension: A 2002 report noted that 85 percent of defendants convicted of crack offenses were black, a fact the U.S. Sentencing Commission warned was leading to a loss of confidence in the fairness of the system.

Both cases, each decided by the same 7-2 alignment, chided federal appeals courts for failing to give district judges sufficient leeway. In each case, the appeals court had overturned a sentence that was shorter than that provided by the guidelines. The two dissenters were Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr.

Judges still may not impose sentences above the range written into law by Congress or state legislatures.

But the decision Monday gives judges broad discretion to impose sentences higher or lower than the federal guidelines, which are not statutes and are issued by the Sentencing Commission.

The two decisions answered questions left hanging in 2005, when the court ruled that federal sentencing guidelines could be constitutional only if advisory rather than mandatory. Appeals courts were to review sentences for "reasonableness," the court said then. But the court did not say what it meant by either advisory or reasonableness.

"The guidelines should be the starting point and the initial benchmark," Justice John Paul Stevens said in one of the decisions Monday, Gall vs. United States.

But Stevens went on to say that the guidelines are just one factor in the "individualized assessment" that a judge must make in every case.

In that case, Brian Gall, who had briefly been involved in an ecstasy distribution ring while a college student, received a sentence of three years' probation rather than 30 to 36 months in prison called for by the guidelines.

The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in St. Louis, ruled that such an extraordinary variance from the guidelines range required an equivalently extraordinary justification.

That judgment was erroneous, Stevens said, in failing to give due deference to the district judge's reasoned and reasonable decision.

The defendant in the crack cocaine case, Derrick Kimbrough, received 15 years instead of 19 to 221/2 for several cocaine and gun-related offenses.

The trial judge said the higher guidelines term would be inappropriate for Kimbrough, a Marine veteran of the Persian Gulf War with an honorable discharge.

The judge also disagreed with the relative treatment of crack and powdered cocaine, a disparity that he said led to disproportionate and unjust results.

The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., overturned the sentence on the grounds that it was unreasonable for a judge to depart from the guidelines "based on a disagreement with the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine offenses."

The Supreme Court took the unusual step of reinstating the original lower sentences, rather than simply instructing the appeals courts to reconsider the cases under an appropriately deferential standard of review.

In her majority opinion in Kimbrough vs. United States, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took account of an important policy development since the case was argued Oct. 2. On Nov. 1, amended guidelines for crack cocaine that the U.S. Sentencing Commission had long advocated took effect when Congress, which had the power to block them, let the moment pass without acting.

Ginsburg said acceptance of the amendment by Congress undermined the government's position that judges should not have discretion to depart from the guidelines themselves. The amendments put into effect a relatively modest change that will reduce sentences for crack by about one-quarter.

The Sentencing Commission was limited in what it could accomplish on its own. A 1986 federal law, enacted at the height of public concern about crack, incorporated a 100-to-1 ratio into mandatory minimum sentences - that is, the same sentence was imposed for a given amount of crack and 100 times that amount of powder.

Bipartisan bills are pending in Congress to address the disparity. Today, the Sentencing Commission will vote on whether to make the Nov. 1 amendment retroactive to the 19,500 inmates imprisoned for crack offenses.

The justices, without comment, refused to disturb lower court rulings dismissing Public Citizen's lawsuit contesting the validity of a $39 billion deficit-reduction bill that passed the House and Senate in slightly differing versions.

The controversy arose in February 2006 after the House passed a version of the bill that was not identical to the Senate-passed measure. Both houses of Congress were under Republican control at the time.

Ordinarily, one chamber would vote again to eliminate the discrepancy. But the vote in the House was 216-214, too close to risk another vote.

Republicans who were in charge in the House refused Democrats' demands for a new vote. Instead, Republican leaders in the House and Senate signed off on the legislation and sent it to President Bush, who signed it into law on Feb. 8.

The provision at issue involved how long Medicare pays for renting some types of durable medical equipment. The Senate voted for 13 months, as intended by Senate and House negotiators, but a Senate clerk erroneously put down 36 months in sending the bill back to House for a final vote. That's what the House approved Feb. 1.

By the time the bill was shipped to Bush, the number was back to 13 months as passed by the Senate.

Lower courts dismissed Public Citizen's lawsuit based upon a 1890 case in which the court held that judges are obliged to accept as accurate legislation that has been signed by the leaders of both houses of Congress. An occasional mistake, or even fraud, is better than the uncertainty that would flow from routine questioning of bills passed by Congress, the court said then.

Barry Lynn, executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group Americans United For Separation of Church and State, which brought the lawsuit, said the ruling would have major implications for the Bush administration's policies of allowing faith-based groups to offer services to government institutions.

"This is an enormously significant case on the whole question of how government can, or in this case, cannot aid religious ministries," Lynn said.

"I think this has implications far broader than a prison in a single state because the basic framework of this decision, the way they reached the conclusion is that government can't pay for these religious social services nor can they turn over functions of government essentially to religious operations," he said.

Prison Fellowship Ministries, which contracts with InnerChange Freedom Initiatives Inc. and other organizations to conduct faith-based programs, must repay about $160,000 to the state for money received between June 2006 and June 2007, said Mark Early, the group's president.

He said the ruling would clarify how faith-based programs could work with government agencies.

"We're pleased because in this opinion there are some clarifying guidelines to help us and other faith-based organizations working in government settings, such as prisons, to be able to fashion a program and make sure they do comply with current understanding of constitutional law in this area."

Prison Fellowship operates nine programs in six states: Iowa, Arkansas, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri and Texas. All are now privately funded through donations from individuals and foundations, he said.

The 24-hour a day, seven-day a week program at Newton immerses inmates in evangelical Christianity. Inmates who complete the 18-month program also get help after they're released from prison.

Fred Scaletta, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Corrections, said corrections officials were reviewing the ruling with the attorney general's office to determine how the state would proceed with the operation of the program.

Bob Brammer, a spokesman for the Iowa attorney general's office, said attorneys were reviewing the ruling and considering whether to appeal.

An appeal could include asking the three-member 8th Circuit panel for clarification on issues or could seek consideration by the full 8th Circuit Court. The ruling also could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Maine attorney general's office argues that the state must protect the health of its children and that Internet and telephone sales of tobacco products have become a serious problem.

Two lower courts ruled against Maine. But if Maine officials prevail in the Supreme Court, "any number of states will impose different standards on any number of different products that they deem unhealthy or unsafe," say the three New England transportation company associations that filed suit.

Intricate national delivery networks have been able to speed $6 trillion worth of packages to their destinations every year because Congress mandated that cargo carriers not be subject to an inefficient patchwork of state laws, the shipping companies argue.

Like other states, Maine has imposed steep increases in cigarette taxes. So smokers nationwide increasingly are going online for bargains, and underage smokers are among them, according to anti-smoking groups.

A 2002 study concluded that Internet vendors sold 400 million packs of cigarettes annually, 2 percent of the cigarettes consumed in the United States, a figure that anti-smoking groups say is growing.

The number of Internet cigarette vendors has risen sharply from 88 in January 2000 to 772 in January 2006, says Kurt Ribisl, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina's school of public health who has spent the past eight years studying the issue.

"This is big business for some of the companies," said Dennis Eckhart, head of the tobacco litigation and enforcement section of the California attorney general's office. "Similar laws in several other states definitely would be at risk if the Supreme Court does not rule in favor of the state of Maine."

Ribisl says the number of Internet Web sites selling tobacco products has leveled off in recent years. At least 40 states now prohibit or severely restrict the direct delivery to consumers of tobacco products purchased from Internet vendors, state attorneys general said in a filing supporting Maine in the case. In addition, credit card companies and several major shipping companies have agreed to cease payments and cease shipping for Internet cigarette sales.

The delivery companies say they are burdened by a patchwork of widely varying state requirements.

Under the Maine statute, delivery companies must check packages against a list from the state attorney general of known unlicensed tobacco retailers. They must deliver only to the person to whom the package is addressed and a recipient under age 27 must present identification.

"Worthy motives are not enough" to uphold Maine's law, a federal judge decided in 2005.

If there is to be regulation in this area, it will have to come from the federal government, the judge ruled.

Failure to submit to the searches, which can last an hour, disqualifies applicants from assistance.

The 10-year-old program was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of six single parents who were seeking assistance. The welfare applicants argued that the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches, protects them from the home visits.

"When the investigator conducts the home inspection, no part of the home is off-limits," they said.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, upholding the program, said the Supreme Court in 1971 allowed social workers to visit homes in New York to determine eligibility. The appeals court, in a 2-1 decision, said the visits do not even constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment in part because people are free to turn away the investigators.

In dissent, however, Judge Raymond Fisher said it was unlawful for an investigator from the district attorney's office to go "walking through the applicant's home in search of physical evidence of ineligibility that could lead to criminal prosecution either for welfare fraud or other crimes unrelated to the welfare application."

The local government said the high court should not step in.

"No applicant has been prosecuted for welfare fraud based upon anything observed or discovered during a home visit that contradicted information provided by the applicant," the county said in its brief for the Supreme Court.

Eight appeals court judges voted to have the full San Francisco-based court hear the case. Seven of those judges called the program "an attack on the poor."

This is Ellison's latest effort to make his mark on voting rights issues.

Last month, the freshman congressman introduced legislation that would ban the ID requirement in federal elections.

Ellison filed the brief with the support of all of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including presidential candidate Barack Obama, a Democratic senator from Illinois.

In the brief, Ellison argues that the tax violates the 24th Amendment's ban on poll or other taxes to vote.