On the 17th floor of the Phillip Burton Federal Building in a city known for being at the edge of social change, a federal trial is under way that could lead to a landmark ruling on same-sex marriage in America.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which began Jan. 11 in the US District Court for Northern California, challenges the constitutionality of California's voter-approved ban on gay marriage. Over the past 10 days, lawyers have made a broad-based case against Proposition 8, ranging from arguments that it reflects prejudice against gays and lesbians to discussions about the nature of modern marriage, and the notion that homosexuality requires special protections like gender and race.

Many gay-marriage advocates say the case is ultimately destined for the US Supreme Court and represents the best path to legalizing same-sex marriage. They hope this lawsuit will be their Loving v. Virginia – the 1967 case that ended race-based restrictions on marriage.

But not all activists are on board. Some worry the stakes are too high: a federal challenge at a time when most states and voters reject gay marriage could be premature. Even if the Supreme Court eventually takes the case – bound to be appealed by the losing side in San Francisco in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and then to the Supreme Court– the court has historically been reluctant to move too far ahead of the people. A defeat in the Supreme Court would deal a huge setback to a movement that has seen significant gains over the past decade.

"The national marriage project was assiduously avoiding a federal court challenge. They were working slowly toward [it]," says Marc Spindelman, a law professor at Ohio State University and an expert on gay and lesbian rights. But, he adds, "if there's a circuit court that's likely to recognize same-sex marriage" it's the Ninth Circuit, under which the district court falls and which is often branded the most liberal.

An embattled Texas judge who closed her court before a death-row inmate could file his final appeal should not lose her job or receive any further punishment beyond the "public humiliation" she has faced, a judge presiding over her ethics trial said in a report released Wednesday.

Judge Sharon Keller still faces five judicial misconduct charges for refusing to keep her court open past 5 p.m., and the state commission that will ultimately decide Keller's fate is not bound by the recommendations in Wednesday's report.

A judge is expected to rule how much ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick should be paying each month toward his $1 million court-ordered restitution to the city of Detroit.

Kilpatrick is required to appear in the afternoon hearing before Wayne County Circuit Court Judge David Groner.

Kilpatrick says he has lowered his restitution payments from $6,000 to $3,000 because his pay as a salesman for Dallas-based Covisint has decreased.

Prosecutors say he has been untruthful about his finances and want Groner to order Kilpatrick to pay a $225,000 lump sum. They also accuse him of violating his probation.

Groner has said he won't address the probation violation issue, which could land Kilpatrick back in jail where he spent 99 days as part of pleas in two criminal cases.

Missouri's top judges questioned on Thursday whether a 2005 law limiting medical malpractice lawsuits is being wrongly applied to people retroactively and is discriminating against the spouses of those injured.

Attorneys for patients argued to the state Supreme Court that the law violates numerous provisions of the Missouri Constitution and that lawmakers had no rational basis to reduce the amount of money that people who had been harmed could win from medical providers.

The law was a priority of the Republican-led Legislature and then-Gov. Matt Blunt. They claimed "tort reform" was essential to curtail rising liability insurance premiums for doctors and to ensure that health care was available and affordable for Missouri residents.

A main change in the 2005 law lowered the cap for non-economic damages such as pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases to a flat $350,000 per lawsuit. Missouri's previous limit of $579,000 had been adjusted annually for inflation and had been interpreted by courts to apply to multiple parties in a lawsuit.

A federal appeals court has overturned the embezzlement convictions of a former tribal manager and members of his family who allegedly stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from Texas' first legal casino.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans issued a ruling Tuesday overturning on procedural grounds the conspiracy and theft convictions of Isidro Garza Jr.; his wife, Martha; and son, Timoteo, a former state representative.

Garza, the former manager of the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, was given vast financial oversight of the tribe and the casino near Eagle Pass from 1996 until he was ousted in 2002. He, family members and other tribal employees — the so-called Kickapoo Seven — were indicted in 2004 for allegedly misappropriating funds from the lucrative casino operation for personal purchases and their political aspirations.

The appellate court, however, ruled that the 2007 trial of Garza, his wife and son was wrongly moved to Waco, creating undue hardship by forcing witnesses, family members and attorneys to travel more than 300 miles for the proceedings.

A federal appeals court overturned Washington state's ban on voting by convicted felons Tuesday in a ruling that could extend ballots to prisoners in other states where studies showed racial bias in the criminal justice system.

In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the Washington law violates the federal Voting Rights Act because evidence showed discrimination against minorities at every level of the state's legal system: arrest, bail, prosecution and sentencing.

If the ruling survives, it will be binding in the circuit's other eight states, including California, which denies voting rights to 283,000 convicted felons in prison or on parole, according to a report from the nonprofit Sentencing Project.

About 114,000 are African Americans, who are disenfranchised at seven times the rate of the general population, the report said.

Among those in Washington state who commit crimes, "minorities are more likely than whites to be searched, arrested, detained and ultimately prosecuted," Judge A. Wallace Tashima said in the appeals court's majority opinion.

For example, he said, studies showed that African Americans in Washington were more than nine times as likely to be in prison as whites and 70 percent more likely to be searched, even though a study of one police department found that officers were more likely to find contraband when searching whites.

Findings were similar for Latinos and Native Americans, none of which could be explained by differences in crime rates, Tashima said.

The Voting Rights Act "demands that such racial discrimination not spread to the ballot box," he said.

Dissenting Judge Margaret McKeown said the court should have told a trial judge to reconsider the Washington law based on an amendment last year that made it easier for paroled felons to vote.