SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown will resign from the California Supreme Court on June 30, the court announced.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Senate elevated Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia after serving nine years on California’s top court. The Republican was the subject of a Senate filibuster for two years.

The California justices have several cases in which a ruling is scheduled within the coming weeks. The cases concern the constitutionality of the Coastal Commission, whether a country club can lawfully withhold marriage benefits to lesbians and a host of other decisions about the rights of gays and lesbians in child custody disputes.

With Brown’s absence, the court will be reduced to six justices until Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fills the vacancy. The state Constitution requires four justices for a majority, so any cases that have been argued this year that are still pending will be heard again later if four votes are not there.

A Schwarzenegger spokesperson said the governor has not forwarded any candidates’ names to a State Bar commission that reviews them in private and recommends whether they are qualified to take Brown’s post.

The Supreme Court recessed from hearing cases June 2 and is not expected to resume oral arguments until Sept. 6. By then, Brown’s successor is expected to be sitting.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The city’s Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution urging city and state agencies to penalize a gay nightclub that a city commission said discriminated against African-Americans.

The decision came a little more than a month after San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission found that Les Natali, the owner of a popular gay nightclub called Badlands, violated local civil rights codes.

“The city has taken a strong stand against discrimination,” said John Newsome with And Castro For All, the organization that pursued the case.

In the resolution, the board urged the city attorney, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing and the San Francisco Entertainment Commission “to impose penalties to the fullest extent of the law to ensure accountability for discrimination.”

The Board of Supervisors can take no punitive action against the club.

The state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control earlier confirmed an investigation into Badlands. If the club is found to have violated state discrimination laws, officials said penalties could range from a warning to the loss of its liquor license.

Natali’s lawyer, Paul Melbostad, called the decision “outrageous” and said And Castro for All is “acting like a vigilante group.”

“This is a shameless act by the board and it’s legally meaningless,” Melbostad said. “All it shows is that the members of the board were afraid that if they didn’t vote for the resolution, And Castro For All would accuse them of being racist.”

The Human Rights Commission found after a 10-month investigation that Badlands required multiple forms of identification from some black customers, used discriminatory hiring practices, applied a dress code only to black patrons and denied entry using other policies rarely applied to whites.

SANTA MARIA, Calif. (AP) – Superior Court Judge Diana Hall, charged with falsely reporting a campaign contribution, was denied a change of venue request by defense lawyers who claimed a fair trial was impossible because Santa Maria is biased against homosexuals.

Hall, who continues to hear civil cases in Santa Maria, is charged with four misdemeanors for allegedly falsely reporting a $20,000 contribution from her former partner, Deidra Dykeman, during the judge’s 2002 re-election campaign. The trial begins Oct. 24.

Visiting Judge Jack Ryan of Orange County denied a motion for change of venue and a defense request to dismiss Hall’s case on constitutional grounds.

“We don’t go anywhere. We stay in Santa Maria and try to find a fair jury, if we can,” said defense attorney Mark Werksman, who wrote in his change of venue motion that Santa Maria was “a conservative town” with a bias against homosexuals.

“The Santa Maria community is perceived as being unfriendly and even hostile toward lesbian and gay individuals,” Werksman wrote.

Lawyers for the state Attorney General’s Office, which is trying the case, said Hall could get a fair trial in the city.

State attorneys are prosecuting the alleged elections violations because the District Attorney’s Office was removed from the case after unsuccessfully trying Hall on a battery charge stemming from a domestic dispute she had with Dykeman in December 2002.

Jurors in her 2003 trial also deadlocked on a felony count alleging the judge had destroyed a phone to prevent Dykeman from calling the police. Hall was convicted in August 2003 of two misdemeanor counts of drunken driving.

CLEVELAND, Ga. (AP) – A White County schools subcommittee recommended cutting all clubs in the school system months after students tried to form a gay support group.

The subcommittee suggested that all extracurricular clubs be replaced with a system of clubs sponsored and led by local adults.

The northeast Georgia county gained attention in February when students tried to form a Gay-Straight Alliance club for gay classmates and supportive students.

The school board agreed to allow the students to start the club, but later school administrators recommended eliminating all non-curricular clubs at the White County High School.

At the time, Superintendent Paul Shaw said the policy change had been in the works for months.

“Clubs have not lived up to what they are supposed to be doing, and the Legislature is requiring that we do additional paperwork and things of that sort,” Shaw said. “Plus, we want to focus on academics this coming school year.”

Prompted by the White County drama, parent groups pushed the state Board of Education to back a proposal that would require students to get permission from their parents to join high school clubs.

The proposal, which was defeated in a 10-3 vote, would have required students to get a signed notice to join any of the 100 or more clubs that some schools offer.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – Former Sen. Jesse Helms acknowledges he was wrong about the AIDS epidemic, but believes integration was forced before its time by “outside agitators who had their own agendas,” according to advance proofs of his memoir.

Here’s Where I Stand, to be published in September by Random House, contains Helms’ first extended comments on national affairs since he retired from the Senate in 2003 after five terms.

Helms, 83, was one of the state’s leading voices of segregation as a TV commentator in Raleigh in the 1960s and opposed nearly every civil rights bill while in the Senate. He has never retracted his views on race or said segregation was wrong.

In the book, Helms suggests that he believed voluntary racial integration would come about without pressure from the federal government or from civil rights protests that he said sharpened racial antagonisms.

“We will never know how integration might have been achieved in neighborhoods across our land, because the opportunity was snatched away by outside agitators who had their own agendas to advance,” he wrote. “We certainly do know the price paid by the stirring of hatred, the encouragement of violence, the suspicion and distrust.”

Helms was also an outspoken opponent of laws to protect homosexuals from discrimination and of funding for AIDS research, but he writes in the book that his views evolved during his final years in the Senate. He cited friendships he developed with North Carolina evangelist Franklin Graham and rock singer Bono, both of whom got him involved in the fight against the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

“Until then,” Helms writes, “it had been my feeling that AIDS was a disease largely spread by reckless and voluntary sexual and drug-abusing behavior, and that it would probably be confined to those in high risk populations. I was wrong.”

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – The state’s highest court gave custody of a 5-year-old boy to his dead mother’s partner, despite the protests of the woman’s blood relatives.

Tina Burch had appealed to the West Virginia Supreme Court for custody of the son of her partner, Christina Smarr, who died in a 2002 car accident. Within hours of her death, Smarr’s relatives had given the child to his grandparents.

A family court gave custody to Burch, but a circuit court ruled that she didn’t have the legal rights to her former partner’s child.

Jim Douglas, Burch’s attorney, argued that the boy’s biological father, who was not involved in the child’s life, supported Burch having custody.

“Both of the child’s biological parents not only acquiesced in, but actively fostered, the relationship,” Justice Robin Davis wrote in the majority opinion.

The opinion said a “psychological parent” could be a biological, adoptive, foster or stepparent, as long as the parental relationship began with the consent of the legal parent or guardian.

The American Civil Liberties Union praised the ruling, saying it is the first time the court has recognized a gay person’s right to be declared a “psychological parent.”