WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from North Carolina officials seeking to revive a state law that had required doctors to perform ultrasounds, display the resulting sonograms and describe the fetuses to women seeking abortions.
The Supreme Court's one-sentence order, one of several cases decided Monday, gave no reasons. Justice Antonin Scalia noted a dissent, also without saying why.
The order left in place an appeals court ruling that had held the law unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment.
"The state cannot commandeer the doctor-patient relationship to compel a physician to express its preference to the patient," Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote in December for a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Va. "This compelled speech, even though it is a regulation of the medical profession, is ideological in intent and in kind."
Other federal appeals courts upheld similar laws from Texas and South Dakota. Such disagreements among appeals courts often lead to Supreme Court review.
In urging the Supreme Court to hear the North Carolina case, Walker-McGill v. Stuart, the state's attorney general, Roy Cooper, told the justices that the law is "perfectly consistent with the First Amendment, as a reasonable regulation of medical practice."
According to Cooper, 24 states require an ultrasound to be performed or offered before an abortion. "Five states have enacted essentially the same display-and-describe requirement at issue in this case," he wrote, "and an additional four states require a physician to provide a simultaneous explanation of an ultrasound image upon a woman's request."
Arkansas' Act 301 of 2013 requires a woman seeking an abortion in Arkansas to undergo an abdominal ultrasound to check for a fetal heartbeat and, if a heartbeat is detected, requires a doctor to inform the woman in writing and give her a statistical probability for carrying the fetus to term without an abortion.
In March 2014, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright struck down a part of Act 301 that outlawed most abortions at or after 12 weeks of pregnancy but found that the ultrasound provision is constitutional.
Monday's development, which set no precedent, did not affect the validity of any law aside from North Carolina's.
Also Monday, the court ruled 5-4 that Fauzia Din, a naturalized U.S. citizen, had no basis to protest after the visa petition she filed for her husband was rejected in 2009 because of concerns about terrorism.
Din argued that the rejection triggered her spousal rights under the Constitution and that she deserved to know the specific reason for the denial.
But Scalia, writing for three justices, said that even assuming that marriage is a fundamental right, Din has not been forbidden from getting married.
"Those right-to-marry cases cannot be expanded to include the right Din argues for -- the right to live in the United States with one's alien spouse," Scalia said.
A dissent from the court's four liberal justices said Din should have prevailed on her constitutional claims.
A federal judge threw out Din's case, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, finding that Din had a right to get a fuller explanation for the visa denial based on her marital rights.
The court also ruled 8-1 Monday that federal appeals courts have authority to decide whether people facing deportation should be able to extend the deadlines in immigration proceedings.
The justices sided with Noel Reyes Mata, a Mexican citizen who had lived in the United States for nearly 15 years. The government began deportation proceedings after he pleaded guilty to an assault charge.
An immigration judge ordered him deported. Mata appealed, but his lawyer failed to file paperwork within the 90 days required. A new attorney tried to reopen the case, but the Board of Immigration Appeals refused.
Mata appealed to the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, but the court said it had no authority to order a deadline extension. The Supreme Court said the appeals court did have such authority.
In another case decided Monday, the court said one of the nation's biggest law firms is not entitled to recover $5.2 million in legal fees it incurred in the course of a bankruptcy proceeding.
The 6-3 ruling said the firm Baker Botts could not collect additional fees it billed during a side dispute over whether the firm should be paid $117 million in fees earned representing Tucson-based copper-mining company Asarco in the underlying bankruptcy.
A U.S. bankruptcy court in Texas initially awarded the firm $117 million in 2011 for its work in Asarco's Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding. But Asarco objected, and the firm spent another $5.2 million in separate litigation defending its fees. A federal appeals court ruled that "fees for defense of fees" could not be paid.
The Supreme Court affirmed the lower court.
Information for this article was contributed by Adam Liptak of The New York Times; by Sam Hananel and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Frank Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Section on 06/16/2015