An Ohio investment group's lawsuit seeking to collect $100 million on three-decade-old Venezuelan promissory notes is headed back to a federal judge for further deliberations.
The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to hear the case was a setback for Venezuela, which argued that federal law protects it from U.S. lawsuits because it is a foreign state.
The high court declined on Monday to accept Venezuela's appeal of a 2010 federal appeals court decision that said the suit filed by Skye Ventures of Columbus could go forward in the U.S.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also said a lower court must determine whether the case should be tried in Venezuela, which will be the next step.
Skye seeks payment on the notes from a defunct government-sponsored bank.
The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a California law that would require euthanizing downed livestock at federally inspected slaughterhouses to keep the meat out of the nation's food system.
The high court ruled that the state's 2009 state law was blocked from going into effect by federal law administered by the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service. .
Federal law "precludes California's effort ... to impose new rules, beyond any the FSIS has chosen to adopt, on what a slaughterhouse must do with a pig that becomes non-ambulatory during the production process," said Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the court's unanimous opinion.
California strengthened regulations against slaughtering so-called "downer" animals after the 2008 release of an undercover Humane Society video showing workers abusing cows at a Southern California slaughterhouse. Under California law, the ban on buying, selling and slaughter of "downer" cattle also extends to pigs, sheep and goats.
But pork producers sued to stop the law, saying the new law interfered with federal laws that require inspections of downed livestock before determining whether they can be used for meat.
The Supreme Court on Friday threw out electoral maps drawn by federal judges in Texas that favored minorities. The decision ultimately could affect control of the U.S. House of Representatives and leaves the fate of Texas' April primaries unclear.
The justices ordered the three-judge court in San Antonio to come up with new plans that pay more attention to maps created by Texas' Republican-dominated state Legislature. All four of the state's new congressional seats could swing based on the outcome.
But the Supreme Court did not compel the use of the state's maps in this year's elections, as Texas wanted. Only Justice Clarence Thomas said he would have gone that far.
The court's unsigned opinion thus did not blaze any new trails in election law or signal retreat from a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, as some supporters of the law feared would result from this case.
Still, the outcome appeared to favor Republicans by instructing the judges to stick more closely to what the Legislature did, said election law expert Richard Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, law school.
