He is to enter federal prison in the coming weeks to serve a four-year sentence. A jury in April convicted Geddings of five counts of mail fraud as part of a scheme to defraud the public of his honest services. Geddings had hid his ties to major lottery vendor Scientific Games as he sought and won a seat on the lottery commission.

His attorney, Tommy Manning of Raleigh, entered what is known as an Alford plea in court, said Wake Assistant District Attorney David Sherlin. An Alford plea allows defendants to maintain innocence but to nonetheless plead guilty because they see no other favorable alternative. Geddings has appealed his federal sentence.

U.S. Labor law, which the justices were in effect sustaining, is very much below average when compared to the rest of the developed world, and the laws themselves, which were largely enacted during the great labor and especially CPUSA led upsurge of the 1930s, were written by a Congress in which "conservative" Southern white supremacy Democrats played a powerful role because of their "seniority" (it helped that they weren't running in competitive elections. The legislation excluded farm workers, domestic workers, and others (African Americans,other minorities, and women were greatly over-represented in the excluded categories) in order to keep labor generally and Southern labor particularly cheap.

From the 1940s to the early 1974s, more and more workers were included under this legislation, which was of course strengthened and augmented by civil rights legislation and affirmative action in the 1960s. But things have gotten steadily worse over the last thirty years (the act which was at question here was a 1974 act whose express purpose was to include more workers in terms of benefits and protection, even though as Justice Ginsburg noted, it in this case was ironically being used by the government to exclude workers).

The unions involved and prominent progressive Democrats have criticized the ruling and promised to work to include home health care workers, which of course is good. But much more is needed. First, the overall health care industry has to be transformed from a private industry to a public health care system, as has been done successfully in all other developed countries. Home health care workers are a part of that industry and the idea that those who deal with the most vulnerable people in our society, people who literally cannot take care of themselves, should be denied the basic benefits that the majority of American workers have, not to mention their own health care and pension rights, should anger working class and progressive people as much as the existence of largescale homelessness in the richest nation on earth should.

U.S. labor law, with its exclusions and exemptions which make sense only if one wants a cheap labor country swimming in an ocean of debt, also has to be transformed so that it is at the very least "competitive" with present-day labor laws in the European Union, by no means ideal but much better than what currently exists in the United States.

This can only happen if we work steadily to elect a pro labor progressive Congress and national administration in 2008, an administration which will begin to both reverse the reactionary policies of the last three decades and also enact in regard to health care legislation which today is more than a half century overdue.

As a postscript, such a government would also be ready to appoint progressive Supreme Court justices who would vote to expand workers rights, not the centrists and moderate liberals who joined with the far right in this case to deny home health care workers basic rights.

The court determined that the towns and counties failed to identify a special injury that could be compensated. It said the claim was essentially a products liability issue, and falls under the state Product Liability Act, which excludes coverage for exposure to toxic material.

A lawyer for the towns and counties, Fidelma L. Fitzpatrick, said they were considering whether to ask the court to reconsider its decision, which dismissed the last remaining claim of the lawsuit.

"It means that the New Jersey Supreme Court turned its back on lead-poisoned children of New Jersey, and they allowed the companies that profited from lead paint to turn their back on the children of New Jersey and the crisis that they created," Fitzpatrick said.

Individuals have little recourse to sue because they cannot identify which manufacturer made the paint that is on the walls of their home, Fitzpatrick said.

The paint makers praised the ruling, noting the Missouri Supreme Court had a similar decision on Tuesday.

"These companies are not responsible for risks today from poorly maintained lead paint," said Bonnie J. Campbell, spokeswoman for the paint makers and a former attorney general of Iowa.

New Jersey Public Advocate Ronald K. Chen, who had entered the case in support of the towns and counties, said the ruling was disappointing, but did recognize that landlords must maintain their properties to prevent lead paint from flaking and becoming a health hazard.

The aged housing stock in New Jersey has at least 2 million units with lead paint, Chen said. As a result, 4,547, or nearly 2.5 percent of New Jersey children under 6, had high levels of lead, compared to 1.6 percent nationally, according to the state Department of Health and Senior Services.

The lawsuit was originally filed in December 2001 by Newark, and was later joined by other towns and counties.

A trial judge had dismissed the entire lawsuit, but an appellate panel reinstated the claim charging the manufacturers with creating a public nuisance.

The private, nonprofit Partnership was started in Decmeber 2000 after Attorney General Michael Moore was successful in persuading a Jackson County chancery judge to start the program. To do so, the judge diverted to the Partnership $20 million per year of the $110 million the state receives annually from the tobacco companies.

Gov. Haley Barbour and Treasurer Tate Reeves filed suit, claiming the judge's decision to appropriate the money to the Partnership was unconstitutional. The settlement funds, they argued, were state money and only the Legislature can spend the funds.

Carlson wrote "...it is the Legislature's solemn duty and responsibility to appropriate these funds and not that of the judiciary."  The ruling was not unexpected.

Justice Oliver Diaz of Biloxi was the only member of the high court to dissent. He said the issue had been settled in 2000 and it was too late for Barbour and Reeves to object.

Barbour said the ruling pointed out "a local judge and the attorney general have no power to give taxpayer money to a private charity."

"It's a shame it look a long, drawn-out lawsuit to stop this illegal and unconstitutional diversion of taxpayer money."

Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Arthur Eaves said Barbour, a former Washington lobbyist who represented tobacco companies, is continuing "to put the interest of his Washington cronies above those of Mississippi children."

Moore said Thursday the issue had never been about constitutionality for Barbour. He said that to appease Barbour, the Legislature voted in 2006 to appropriate the funds to the Partnership, but the governor vetoed the bill.

While some union foes called the court's ruling an important victory and predicted that it would lead to other such laws, the National Right to Work Committee acknowledged that it decided a narrow issue.

The justices did not say it was unconstitutional to require teachers and other public employees to pay dues to a union. Rather, they said only that states that allow public sector unions may also protect the rights of dissidents.

At issue before the court was a unique Washington state law that said unions may not collect fees from a nonmember and spend this money on politics unless "affirmatively authorized by the individual."

The state's largest teachers union challenged this rule in court. The Washington Supreme Court struck down the restriction as a violation of the union's rights, but the ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court.

"Unions have no constitutional entitlement to the fees of nonmember employees," said Justice Antonin Scalia. "It is undeniably unusual for a government agency to give a private entity the power, in essence, to tax government employees," he wrote, referring to the "agency shop" laws in many states that permit such arrangements in the public sector.

The vote was a devastating blow to efforts to reverse a 2003 court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.

An amendment now can't reach voters before 2010. That would happen only with a successful new petition drive and the backing of 50 lawmakers in two consecutive sittings of the 200-seat Legislature - including the one that just rejected the ballot measure.

Such a scenario appeared increasingly unlikely, but opponents of gay marriage vowed to press on.