A North Texas city that sits atop a natural gas reserve is preparing for an extended court battle after voters made it the first in the state to ban further hydraulic fracturing — a fight that cities nationwide considering similar laws will likely be watching closely.

An industry group and the state's little-known but powerful General Land Office responded quickly to the measure Denton approved Tuesday night, seeking an injunction in District Court to stop it from being enforced.

Battling the fracking ban will be Texas Land Commissioner-elect George P. Bush's first fight. The founding partner of an energy and infrastructure consultancy, Bush promoted the economic benefits of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, throughout his campaign.

The ban could have a domino effect in Texas, threatening an "energy renaissance" in shale resources accessed with the drilling technique, said David Porter, a commissioner on the Texas Railroad Commission, the state's oil and gas regulator.

Scores of cities in other states have considered similar bans over health and environmental concerns. Measures aimed at restricting fracking passed Tuesday in Athens, Ohio, and California's San Benito and Mendocino Counties, but failed elsewhere in those states.

The proposal in Denton, a university town about 40 miles north of Dallas, was a litmus test on whether any community in Texas — the nation's biggest oil and gas producer — could rebuff the industry and still thrive.

The courts must "give a prompt and authoritative answer" on whether Denton voters had the authority to ban fracking, Texas Oil and Gas Association attorney Tom Phillips, a former chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, said Wednesday.

The Dominican Republic withdrew as a member of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on Tuesday, leading rights activists to raise concerns about the welfare of migrants in the Caribbean country.

The announcement came just weeks after the human rights court found the Dominican Republic discriminates against Dominicans of Haitian descent, angering the government, which called the findings "unacceptable" and "biased."Last year, a Dominican court ruled that people born in the Dominican Republic to migrants living there illegally were not automatically entitled to citizenship, basically rendering thousands of people stateless.

The government has since pledged to resolve their status but has only offered residency and work permits under a new program.The Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court had given the Dominican government six months to invalidate the Dominican court's ruling.

In a 59-page ruling issued Tuesday night, the Constitutional Court said the country had to withdraw from the rights court because the Senate never issued a resolution to ratify the February 1999 agreement with the rights court as required by the Dominican constitution.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from a public interest group and four members of Congress who challenged the Senate filibuster as unconstitutional.

The justices let stand a lower court ruling that said Common Cause and the lawmakers did not have legal standing to pursue the case.

The plaintiffs argued that Senate rules requiring at least 60 votes to bring legislation to a vote violates the constitutional principle of majority rule. A federal appeals court said the lawsuit was filed against the wrong parties.

The case was brought against Vice President Joe Biden in his role as president of the Senate, and against the Senate's secretary, parliamentarian and sergeant at arms.

Common Cause says it can't sue the Senate directly because that is barred under the Constitution's Speech and Debate Clause.

Last year, the Senate voted to end use of the filibuster rule from blocking most presidential nominees. Democrats said they ended the rule out of frustration that Republicans were routinely using the tactic to block President Barack Obama's nominees for pivotal judgeships and other top jobs.

But 60 votes are still required to end filibusters against legislation.

Supreme Court justices have their first chance this week to decide whether they have the appetite for another major fight over President Barack Obama's health care law.

Some of the same players who mounted the first failed effort to kill the law altogether now want the justices to rule that subsidies that help millions of low- and middle-income people afford their premiums under the law are illegal.

The challengers are appealing a unanimous ruling of a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, that upheld Internal Revenue Service regulations that allow health-insurance tax credits under the Affordable Care Act for consumers in all 50 states. The appeal is on the agenda for the justices' private conference on Friday, and word of their action could come as early as Monday.

The fight over subsidies is part of a long-running political and legal campaign to overturn Obama's signature domestic legislation by Republicans and other opponents of the law. Republican candidates have relentlessly attacked Democrats who voted for it, and the partisanship has continued on the federal bench. Every judge who has voted to strike down the subsidies was appointed by a Republican president.

The appeal has arrived at the Supreme Court at a curious time; there is no conflicting appeals court ruling that the justices often say is a virtual requirement for them to take on an issue. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited that practice, for example, as a reason she and her colleagues decided not to take on the same-sex marriage issue. And in the gay marriage cases, both sides were urging the court to step in.

The Washington Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on Tuesday about whether the voter-approved charter school law violates the state constitution.

King County Superior Court Judge Jean Rietschel found in December that parts of the new law were unconstitutional. Her decision focused on whether certain taxpayer dollars can be used to pay for the operation of charter schools.

Those dollars are essential to the success of these new schools, according to the people who want to open nine charter schools in Washington state next fall. The state's first charter school, First Place Scholars, opened in Seattle this fall.

Both sides asked the state Supreme Court to skip the appeals court process and directly review the case.

A Utah judge will get his first chance in December to hear the evidence against a woman accused of killing six of her seven newborns and storing all of their bodies in her garage.

Attorneys for Megan Huntsman, 39, decided Monday not to waive their right to a preliminary hearing. That proceeding has been set for Dec. 11. At the conclusion of the hearing, a judge will decide if there is sufficient proof to send the case to trial.

Huntsman is in jail on $6 million bail, charged with six counts of first-degree murder. She has not yet entered a plea. She made a brief appearance in court Monday, but didn't speak.

Huntsman's estranged husband discovered the infants' bodies on April 12 while cleaning out the home they had shared in Pleasant Grove, Utah, a city of about 35,000 south of Salt Lake City.

Police say Huntsman strangled or suffocated the infants from 1996 to 2006, and that a seventh baby found in her garage was stillborn. Investigators believe Huntsman was addicted to methamphetamine and didn't want to care for the babies.

DNA results have revealed that all seven babies were full term and that her now-estranged husband, Darren West, was the biological father of the infants.

Huntsman lived with West during the 10-year period the children were killed, but he is not considered a suspect in the deaths. He went to prison in 2006 and spent more than eight years behind bars after pleading guilty to drug charges.

West made the grisly discovery while cleaning out the garage. He called police to report finding a dead infant in a small white box covered with electrician's tape. Six other bodies were found wrapped in shirts or towels inside individual boxes in the garage after police obtained a search warrant.

Arizona's authority to confront its illegal immigration woes was again reined in Wednesday when a federal appeals court threw out a 2006 voter-approved law denying bail to people in the country illegally who are charged with certain crimes.

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals follows other battles over the state's immigration policies, including rulings that struck down much of Arizona's landmark 2010 immigration enforcement law.

A small number of the state's immigration laws have been upheld, including a key section of its 2010 law that requires police to check people's immigration status under certain circumstances.

But the courts have slowly dismantled other laws that sought to draw local police into immigration enforcement as frustrations in the state grew over what critics said was inadequate border protection by the federal government.