AEP, based in Columbus, Ohio, maintains it never violated Clean Air Act rules to curb emissions, and had already spent or planned to pay $5.1 billion on scrubbers and other equipment to reduce its pollution.

Scott Cowger, spokesman for Maine's Department of Environmental Protection, said the settlement should have an impact beyond acid rain control. It will limit regional haze and ozone, and very possibly reduce mercury in the environment, he said.

Cowger acknowledged Maine was not in the suit, but not due to a lack of interest. Maine is involved in acid rain litigation against the EPA already, said Cowger, adding that the state must aim its resources where they are going to have the greatest effect.

Matthew Davis of Environment Maine said he hopes the settlement sends a message that power plant operators no longer can disobey the Clean Air Act and get away with it.

In Vermont, Attorney General William Sorrell said the new pollution control devices will reduce a lot of particulate matter that causes pollution, helping people with asthma and other conditions.

"This is a major victory for the environment in the northeastern part of the U.S.," said Sorrell. "Acid rain is a huge problem in the Adirondacks, the Green Mountains and the White Mountains."

New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte and Environmental Services Commissioner Thomas Burack said the settlement will open the door to the largest emissions reductions ever.

"This settlement represents a huge step toward reducing the impact that Midwestern coal-fired power plants have on New Hampshire's air quality," Ayotte said.

The case against AEP began in 1999 when New Hampshire, Vermont and six other states, as well as 13 environmental groups joined the Environmental Protection Agency's crackdown on energy companies accused of rebuilding coal-fired power plants without installing pollution controls as required.

"I asked if I could go into the bathroom because they didn't have a privacy screen and no women security officers were available," Plato said Wednesday. "They said, 'No.'

"I wasn't carrying a shank in my bra. If it's so dangerous, why did they give it back and let me put it on?"

Patrick McDonald, the U.S. Marshal in Boise, said appropriate security protocols were followed in the Sept. 20 matter, and guards suggested she simply remove the bra in her car outside, or find a restaurant bathroom.

"She's inflating it," McDonald said. "All of a sudden she just took it off. It wasn't anything we wanted to happen and it wasn't anything we asked for her to do. She did it so fast."

Plato, of Bonners Ferry, said she was parked on a busy street and wasn't familiar with downtown Coeur d'Alene businesses. So her husband held up his coat to shield her from the rest of the people in the courthouse lobby while she removed her bra underneath her shirt.

Generally, McDonald said, undergarments aren't considered a danger to security.

"I don't think they're considered a weapon, really, the last time I looked," he said.

He declined to discuss other ways the federal courthouse guards could have screened Plato for weapons.

Plato wants the Marshals Service to apologize and stop forcing women to disrobe.

"It was very humiliating," her husband, Owen Plato, said. "They could have handled it with a much more professional attitude."

Whether Jackson has the discretion to ignore the guidelines is the issue before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

A companion case from Iowa also involves a judge's discretion to impose a more lenient sentence in a drug case, although Brian Gall pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ecstasy. In Gall's case, the judge decided probation was sufficient punishment even though the guidelines called for prison time.

Federal appeals courts threw out both sentences, but the justices accepted the defendants' appeals.

The Bush administration is supporting the appeals court rulings, while civil rights and advocacy groups are backing the defendants.

Congressional opponents of the laws establishing more severe sentencing for crack cocaine than powdered cocaine are racially discriminatory because they hit more directly at the black community, where this form of drug abuse is more commonplace.

Advocates for reducing the disparity point to crime statistics that show crack is more of an urban and minority drug while cocaine powder is used more often by the affluent. They say harsher penalties for crack cocaine unfairly punish blacks.

More than four-fifths of crack cocaine offenders in federal courts last year were black, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. By contrast, just over a quarter of those convicted of powder cocaine crimes last year were black, the commission said.

Kimbrough actually had much more powder than crack, but it was the latter that determined the length of his prison term.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond said judges are not free to impose sentences shorter than the guidelines "based on a disagreement with the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine offenses."

The crack-powder disparity grew out of a 1986 law that was passed in response to violent crimes committed to get money to feed crack habits.

The law includes what critics have called the 100-to-1 disparity: Trafficking in 5 grams of crack cocaine carries a mandatory five-year prison sentence, but it takes 500 grams of cocaine powder to warrant the same sentence.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency within the U.S. judiciary, voted in May to reduce the recommended sentencing ranges for people convicted of crack possession, a step toward lessening the disparity. The recommendation will become effective Nov. 1 unless Congress acts.

At the same time, the commission urged Congress to repeal the mandatory prison term for simple possession and increase the amount of crack required to trigger obligatory five-year or more prison terms as a way to focus on major drug traffickers.

The Supreme Court gave a boost to judges' discretion when it ruled in 2005 that the sentencing guidelines are advisory, not mandatory. The guidelines were adopted in the 1980s to ensure comparable sentences for similar crimes from courtroom to courtroom.

In the other issue appealed to the nation's highest court, the industry said the generalized jury findings rested on evidence, arguments and theories of liability that were preempted by a federal law, the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act.

A Miami jury ruled in 2000 that the tobacco companies deceived smokers about the dangers of cigarettes and ordered the companies to pay $145 billion to ailing Florida smokers, estimated to number about 700,000.

The case, filed by Miami Beach pediatrician Howard Engle in 1994, was the first smokers' lawsuit to be certified as a class action.

But a Florida appeals court overturned the punitive damages award and decertified the class action, a ruling upheld by the Florida Supreme Court.

Defendants in the case included Altria Group Inc's Philip Morris USA unit; the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co and Brown & Williamson units of Reynolds American Inc; the Lorillard Tobacco Co unit of Loews Corp., which trades as Carolina Group; and Vector Group Ltd's  Liggett.

In the Supreme Court appeal, the companies said the constitutional right of due process "prohibits a state court from giving preclusive effect to a jury verdict when it is impossible to discern which of numerous alternative grounds formed the basis for the jury's finding of wrongful conduct."

They also argued that a plaintiff may not avoid federal preemption under a 1992 Supreme Court ruling by merely invoking characterizations such as "fraud" and "negligence." 

Proponents of the laws that have been passed since the contested 2000 presidential election say the measures combat fraud. But opponents said poor people and minorities who often don't have driver's licenses, passports or other government-issued identification would be excluded from the polls.

Seven states require a photo identification to vote and 17 states require identification without photos. The battle has broken down over partisan lines with Republicans favoring laws they said would combat voter fraud while Democrats have pushed proposals they said would encourage more voter participation.

The voter identification case is from Indiana, where Secretary of State Todd Rokita, a Republican, said "voter fraud exists and Hoosiers shouldn't have to become further victims of it."

But state Democratic Party chairman Dan Parker, whose party urged the court to take the case, said Republicans have "relied on fear and flimsy legal logic to push through a policy that deters voting instead of promoting it."

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee responded cautiously to the announcement. "We are pleased that the Supreme Court is bringing attention to this important issue," Danny Diaz said.

"This is another step to ensure that every citizen who is eligible to vote will have that right."

Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who heads the DNC Voting Rights Institute, likened voter requirements to a "modern-day poll tax" designed to disenfranchise black and poor voters.

"Some of us in the voting rights community are very nervous because we fear the court will make matters worse," she said.

"This is a tremendous victory for the civil liberties of young adults," said Kary Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan.

Under the 1998 law, pedestrians under 21 who refuse to take a breath test face a $100 fine. To require a breath analysis, an officer must have reasonable cause to believe that a minor has been drinking.

Backers of the law have said police need breath testers and other tools to enforce the legal drinking age.

In 2006, the city of Mount Pleasant and Isabella County agreed to pay $5,000 to two of the plaintiffs, Cullin Stewart and Samuel Maness, and stop warrantless pedestrian breath tests until Lawson issued a final ruling.

Both Stewart and Maness attended a 2003 post-prom party in Isabella County where, according to the lawsuit, an interagency police task force called the "Party Patrol" broke up the party, placed the students in a circle and asked if they had been drinking.

They had to blow into a portable breath tester, according to the suit. Stewart was not charged, but Maness was issued a citation accusing him of being a minor in possession of alcohol.

Michigan State Police, Central Michigan University and Saginaw County's Thomas Township Police Department also are defendants in the case.

A telephone message seeking comment was left at the office of state police spokeswoman Shanon Akans.