The Supreme Court is preparing to hear arguments in January in a case that could make races for judgeships “even more like contests for other elected offices,” Gavel Grab reports from Governing Magazine. In Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar, the court will be asked to decide the constitutionality of state bans on judicial candidates personally soliciting campaign contributions. Lawyers for Lanell Williams-Yulee, a former judicial candidate, contend the Florida solicitation ban restricts free speech in an unconstitutional way. Justice at Stake Executive Director Bert Brandenburg said the prohibitions are among the only protections of the integrity of these contests that remain today.

States that tax diesel fuel differently for railroads and trucks aren’t unfairly favoring one industry over the other, officials from Tennessee and several other states argued before the Supreme Court  yesterday. Tennessee, Alabama and others say they will lose millions in tax revenue if the court sides with the railroads and finds the system discriminatory, the Tennessean reports. “Tennessee’s experience ... demonstrates that the tax burden on railroads cannot be adjusted to the railroads’ satisfaction,” Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper Jr. wrote in court papers.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide Friday whether Texas' denial of a specialty license plate featuring the Confederate flag was an infringement on free speech, WRSP reports from USA Today. In doing so, the court held in abeyance another case in which North Carolina approved a "Choose Life" license plate but denied one defending a woman's right to choose.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that warehouse workers who fill orders for retail giant Amazon are not entitled to pay for time spent complying with security checks at the end of their shifts. At the heart of the case was whether the time employees spent waiting in line and going through the security check was related to their primary job duties. In saying it was not, the justices reversed a ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which had said the screenings should be compensated because they were performed for the employer’s benefit and were integral to the workers’ jobs. WTVC-TV NewsChannel 9 has the AP story.

The Supreme Court today heard arguments regarding a former UPS driver who sued the company for discriminating against pregnant women. Peggy Young was pregnant with her now 7-year-old daughter when UPS told her she could not have a temporary assignment to avoid lifting heavy packages, as her doctor had ordered. Young's case hinges on the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, a law that Congress passed in 1978 specifically to include discrimination against pregnant women as a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The question in Young's case is whether UPS violated the law through its policy of providing temporary light-duty work only to employees who had on-the-job injuries, were disabled under federal law or lost their federal driver certification. WATE has more.

Lawyers for the state of Louisiana have joined with Michigan officials in asking the Supreme Court to resolve the question of whether states can ban same-sex couples from marrying. In the state’s response filed at the Supreme Court yesterday, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell argues that the justices should take the case because the state’s “case squarely implicates a spiraling national controversy that has already nullified the marriage laws of over 20 states and spawned a four-to-one circuit split.” The response from Louisiana came before the responses to other petitions filed earlier by same-sex couples in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, Buzzfeed News reports.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued additional orders from its Nov. 25 conference but did not grant review to any new cases. It denied review to several appeals including an Arizona case testing whether an inmate was entitled to a federal court hearing on whether the judge who presided at his trial was biased against him; a case seeking to clarify whether police can make a brief stop and engage in limited questioning of a person seen leaving a home about to be searched; and one of two cases looking at whether a company accused of inducing a patent infringement claim can use as a defense a belief that the patent was not valid. SCOTUSblog has more on those decisions. Monday also was the first day of the court’s December sitting. The hearing list for the month is available here.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was back on the bench today, five days after she had a stent implanted to clear a blocked artery. The Associated Press reports that she questioned lawyers in “in her usual exacting fashion.” Ginsburg was hospitalized last Tuesday after experiencing discomfort during an exercise session. The 81-year-old Ginsburg is the oldest justice. She has been on the court since 1993 and has not missed a day, despite two earlier bouts with cancer in 1999 and 2009, and the death of her husband in 2010.

From the violent lyrics of rap music to the crude comments of teenagers in video-game chat rooms, the U.S. Supreme Court struggled today over where to draw the line between free speech and illegal threats in the digital age. The debate came in the case of a Pennsylvania man convicted of posting violent threats on Facebook about killing his estranged wife, shooting up a school and slitting the throat of an FBI agent. Defense lawyers said the man was merely "venting" and did not mean to threaten anyone, while the government argued the standard should be whether his words would make a reasonable person feel threatened not what he intended. The Citizen Tribune has the story from the Associated Press.

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to block gay marriages in South Carolina, the Washington Post reports. The high court today denied a request by Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson to block the marriages while he challenges a federal judge’s recent order that went into effect at noon today and strikes down the state’s ban. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented, although the court nor the dissenters gave any explanation, according to SCOTUSblog.