By BOB EGELKO, San Francisco Chronicle

Keep that towel handy. California parks officials can enforce a ban on nudity at any state beach, even in areas that have been informally designated as "clothing optional," a state appeals court says.

Two students who were threatened with suspension at the College of Alameda (Calif.) after one of them prayed with an ailing teacher in a faculty office can sue the community college district for allegedly violating their freedom of speech, a federal judge has ruled.

In thousands of pages, the combatants in the Proposition 8 fight have made their case to the California Supreme Court.

On one side: the people's right to amend their Constitution and define marriage. On the other side: the courts' duty to protect minorities, such as gays and lesbians, from the tyranny of the majority.

In August 2005, John McKay, a 19-year-old Stanford student and former high school debate champion, committed suicide by rolling up the windows in a car at his mother's Menlo Park, Calif., home and piping in exhaust fumes.

One of the most momentous and least-discussed topics in the presidential campaign is the likely departure in the next four years of as many as three of the more liberal justices on a closely divided U.S. Supreme Court.

WASHINGTON -- A proposed Bush administration regulation on contraception and abortion would stop California from enforcing a state law that requires Catholic hospitals and charities to provide birth control coverage for thousands of female employees, state Attorney General Jerry Brown and family-planning advocates say.

A California appeals court upheld the state's 12-year-old medical marijuana law this week, rejecting two counties' arguments that allowing patients to use the drug with their doctor's approval condones violations of federal narcotics laws.

Backers of a November initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California plan to tell voters in the state ballot pamphlet that the constitutional amendment would protect children as young as kindergarten age from being taught in school about the virtues of gay and lesbian matrimony.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Brewster Kahle, who runs an online library in San Francisco, was appalled when his volunteer lawyers told him in November that the FBI was demanding records of all communications with one of his patrons as part of an investigation of "international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."

The legal battle over same-sex marriage in California is also a clash of religions.