Court rules on rights for deaf

The Supreme Court took action on a number of issues Monday.

In a major case the justices dealt a setback to provisions for deaf children, ruling 6 to 3 that school districts do not have to provide a free sign language interpreter for any hearing-impaired students.

The high court left intact a ruling which found that right-to-work laws, adopted by 20 states, cannot be enforced on federally controlled lands within the states' borders.

The court refused to revive an $11 million lawsuit against NBC-TV that blamed TV violence for the sexual assault of a nine-year-old girl, finding that a network's programming is protected by the First Amendment.

The justices threw out a case involving charges that Missouri's attorney general tried to damage the women's rights movement by filing a suit against the National Organization for Women's boycott against states that have not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment.

The court declared unconstitutional the streamlined bankruptcy court system created by Congress in 1978, putting immediate pressure on lawmakers to devise a new system.