Justin Gatlin's pursuit of Olympic gold in Beijing is really over now. His fight against the powers that banned him from the games — well, that will be more like a marathon than a sprint.

The defending Olympic 100-meter champion lost his appeal Thursday to run in the U.S. Olympic track trials and said he will not take the case to the Supreme Court, meaning there are no more back doors or last-second maneuvers that could land him in China in six weeks.

But he will continue to seek monetary and other damages from the U.S. Olympic Committee, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and other defendants, saying they discriminated against him because his first doping violation, in 2001, was for taking prescribed medication to treat attention deficit disorder.

Because that penalty was on the books, his second violation in 2006 triggered the suspension that has barred him from Beijing.

Earlier this month, the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld that ban.

In the lawsuit, Gatlin said banning him from Olympic trials violated his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Gatlin claims he has never intentionally doped.

The Supreme Court made it easier Thursday for employees to prove they have suffered discrimination because of their age.

In a 7-1 ruling, the court said that when older workers are disproportionately affected by an employment decision, the employer bears the burden of explaining whether there was a reasonable explanation other than age for the company's action.

The case involves workers over 40 who challenged their dismissals from jobs at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in upstate New York.

Thirty of the 31 workers laid off by the lab in 1996 were over 40. Twenty-six of those employees sued Knolls claiming that the layoffs violated the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

Justice David Souter acknowledged, in his majority opinion, that the decision "makes it harder and costlier to defend" age discrimination lawsuits. But Souter said, "We have to read it the way Congress wrote it."

One momentous case down, another equally historic decision to go. The Supreme Court returns to the bench Monday with 17 cases still unresolved, including its first-ever comprehensive look at the Second Amendment's right to bear arms.

The guns case — including Washington, D.C.'s ban on handguns — is widely expected to be a victory for supporters of gun rights. Top officials of a national gun control organization said this week that they expect the handgun ban to be struck down, but they are hopeful other gun regulations will survive.

Last week, the court delivered the biggest opinion of the term to date with its ruling, sharply contested by the dissenting justices, that guarantees some constitutional rights to foreign terrorism detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 5-4 decision, which Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for his four more liberal colleagues, was the first case this term that broke along ideological lines.

The conservative-liberal split was seen frequently last term, including in cases that limited abortion rights, reined in voluntary school desegregation plans, made it harder to sue for pay discrimination and prodded the Bush administration to combat global warming by regulating tailpipe emissions. Kennedy was the only justice in the majority in all those cases, siding with conservatives in all but the global-warming dispute.

It's hardly unusual that the cases that take until late spring to resolve are the most contentious and most likely to produce narrow majorities.

The dispute over gun rights poses several important questions. Although the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, the court has never definitively said what it means to have a right to keep and bear arms. The justices also could indicate whether, even with a strong statement in support of gun rights, Washington's handgun ban and other gun control laws can be upheld.

Officials at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said recently that they expect Washington's 32-year-old handgun ban to fall but believe that background checks, limits on large-volume gun sales and prohibitions on certain categories of weapons can survive.

In addition to the guns case, the justices are still weighing whether Exxon Mobil Corp. has to pay a $2.5 billion punitive damages judgment over the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989 and whether people convicted of raping children may be executed.

Exxon has been fighting an Alaska jury's verdict for 14 years, contending that the $3.5 billion it already has spent following the worst oil spill in U.S. history is enough. The jury initially awarded $5 billion to 33,000 commercial fishermen, Native Alaskans, landowners, businesses and local governments, but a federal appeals court cut the verdict in half.

Some justices appeared, based on their comments when the case was argued in February, to favor cutting the judgment further. Justice Samuel Alito is sitting out the case because he owns $100,000 to $250,000 in Exxon stock.

Also awaiting a decision is the case of a man sentenced to death in Louisiana after he was convicted of raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. Only five states — Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas are the others — allow executions for the rape of a child, but only Louisiana has imposed death sentences on people convicted of the crime.

The Supreme Court banned executions for rape in 1977 in a case in which the victim was an adult woman. The last executions for rape or any other crime that did not include a victim's death were in 1964.

Retirements typically are announced at the end of the term, although it would be a huge surprise if anyone decided to retire this year with a presidential election looming and little prospect of a nominee being confirmed before then.

Five justices, though, will be at least 70 by the time the court reconvenes in October. Justice John Paul Stevens is 88, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75, Justice Antonin Scalia is 72, Kennedy will turn 72 in July and Justice Stephen Breyer will celebrate his 70th birthday in August.

A justice of the peace can no longer give parents the choice of paying a fine or paddling their children in open court for now, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Los Fresnos Justice of the Peace Gustavo Garza was sued by three families who say Garza left them with no real option when he told them they must pay a fine for their children's transgressions or paddle them in open court.

Until District Judge Abel Limas can resolve that case, he ordered Garza to halt the paddling. A trial date has not been set.

The lawsuit was initially brought by the parents of a 15-year-old Los Fresnos girl who appeared in Garza's court in April for skipping school.

Daniel Zurita paddled his stepdaughter with one of the two wooden paddles Garza displays in his courtroom after the justice said it was either that or pay a $500 fine.

Last week, Garza said offering paddling as an option was lawful and that 98 percent of parents took that choice.

Garza was represented by Cameron County attorney Richard Burst at a hearing Wednesday. A woman in the county attorney's office who did not identify herself declined comment and hung up.

A message left for Garza at his office was not immediately returned.

Plaintiff attorney Mark Rossi said Burst rejected his offer to stop the case if Garza would halt the paddling in his courtroom and apologize.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that a whistleblower law intended to expose fraud can be applied to subcontractors and other indirect recipients of federal funds.

The case before the court involved alleged contract fraud by a former unit of General Motors Corp. At issue was whether the False Claims Act covers any fraudulent claim paid for by government funds, or only fraudulent claims directly submitted to a government official.

Justice Samuel Alito charted a middle path, saying the law can be used if fraudulent statements are ultimately intended to get the government to pay claims.

The whistleblower law does not apply in situations in which a subcontractor does not intend the government to rely on a fraudulent claim as a condition of payment.

A lower appeals court had ruled that the whistleblower suits could proceed, because the False Claims Act covers claims made to other parties, "so long as the claim will be paid with government funds."

The court sent the case back to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to apply the standard it laid out Monday.

The $500 million a year fantasy sports business received a huge boost on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Major League Baseball and its players union over the use of player names and their statistics.

Without comment, the justices refused to step into the dispute, giving the owners and operators of countless sports fantasy companies the opportunity to operate without having to pay to be licensed by baseball.

Jeff Thomas, a Kenosha, Wis.-based operator of two fantasy sports Web sites and president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, said the decision was a victory for free speech and "marks potentially the single biggest day in the history of the fantasy sports history."

In fantasy sports, participants act as owners or managers of a sports team, and track how the players they have perform statistically. The statistical performance is converted into points, which are compiled and totaled.

The attorneys general of 10 states are urging the California Supreme Court to delay finalizing its ruling to legalize same-sex marriage.

The attorneys general say in court documents filed Thursday that they have an interest in the case because they would have to determine if their states would recognize the marriage of gay residents who wed in California.

They want the court to stay its ruling until after the November election, when voters likely will decide whether to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown is urging the court not to grant the stay.

The states involved are Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah.