The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a federal policy that allows employers to reduce their health insurance expenses for retired workers once they turn 65 and qualify for Medicare.

The justices turned down an appeal by the 35-million-member AARP to undo a rule that essentially allows employers to treat retirees differently depending on their age.

The rules were put into place by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, with the support of labor unions and other groups. They worried that employers would greatly reduce or eliminate health benefits for millions of retirees if they could not take Medicare into account when structuring the health benefit packages they voluntarily provide their retired workers.

The EEOC rule makes clear that employers can spend more on retirees under 65 years of age than those over 65 without running afoul of age discrimination laws.

The EEOC said it proposed the rule in response to a decision in 2000 by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that held that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act requires employers to spend the same amount on health insurance benefits provided Medicare-eligible retirees as those received by younger retirees.

AARP said EEOC violated the intent of Congress when it proposed the rule. But the EEOC said the same age discrimination law allows it to carve out an exemption to preserve the long-standing practice that allows employers to coordinate benefits with Medicare.

The same appeals court upheld the EEOC policy last year

An anti-illegal immigration lawsuit turned out to be much better as a metaphor than as a lawsuit.

When a former leader of Canyon County, Idaho, invoked civil RICO lawsto sue four corporations for hiring illegal immigrants, the move madeheadlines all the way up to The New York Times: The newspaper viewed it as a prism to understand how the immigration issue split the Republican Party.

But an ideologically balanced panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disposed of the complaint last week.Canyon County didn't have standing to argue that the companies' allegedhiring of illegal immigrants unfairly upped the cost of providingpublic services, Senior Judge A. Wallace Tashima ruled.

"We find it particularly inappropriate to label a governmental entity'injured in its property' when it spends money on the provision ofadditional public services," Tashima wrote, "given that those servicesare based on legislative mandates and are intended to further thepublic interest."

Senior Judge William Canby Jr. and Judge Consuelo Callahan joined Tashima.