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MedImmune , with a market cap of $ 6.9 billion and more than 2,400 employees , is the eighth-largest biotech firm in the world , measured by stock value , and by far the biggest in the Washington region.About 80 percent of its revenue comes from sales of Synagis , which prevents certain respiratory infections in premature babies . Immigration and Customs Enforcement " finds the judge 's decision troubling as a matter of fact and law , and the agency is considering its legal options , " according to an agency statement.Four of the eight , including Hamide and Shehadeh , have legal residency , according to immigration officials . For their part , consumer and anti-smoking groups hope that the court will rule against Philip Morris - - and show thatpunitive-damage limits do not apply to especially reprehensible conduct.By the end of oral arguments yesterday , however , it seemed that the court was reluctant to rule broadly in either direction.Instead , several members of the court , including some who had supported its recent limits on punitive damages , suggested that the best way to handle the case would be to send it back to the Oregon Supreme Court for clarification of technical state law issues . But because this year that day fell on Yom Kippur , the holiest day of the Jewish calendar , the session was brief - - about 10 minutes - - and the justices did not hear oral arguments . Yesterday in Richmond , a House committee approved a bill that would ban taxpayer money going to religious and charitable groups that provide assistance to illegal immigrants.The legislation was sponsored by Jackson Miller , the newly elected Republican delegate from Manassas , who said he was upset that taxpayers ' money was used to fund a day-laborer center in Herndon in 2005.The county government study was able to determine only the specific costs of illegal immigration at the county jail and juvenile detention center and the administrative costs of processing emergency Medicaid applications at hospitals and clinics.Most of the $ 3 million was spent housing illegal immigrants at the jail , according to the study.Gerhart said the county could not determine how much the school system spends on illegal immigrants , because students are not required to provide proof of legal status.Prince William 's study was unusual because it was the first attempt by a local government in the region to determine the price tag of funding local services for illegal immigrants , according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and the National Council of La Raza , a leading Hispanic civil rights group . " But later , Kennedy expressed worry that the federal ban might leave some women at " risk if the uterine wall is compromised by cancer or some forms of preeclampsia , " a dangerous spike in blood pressure.Such health questions are central to the most important abortion case to reach the court in half a decade.The federal law , passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in 2003 , bans the procedure known medically as " intact dilation and extraction , " which usually occurs in the second trimester of pregnancy . It comes with a dense appendix of the courts ' workload - - the diminishing number of cases the high court itself accepts has been much commented on in legal circles - - and with such arcane findings as " the national median time from filing of a civil case to its disposition was 8.3 months , which reflected a decline from the 9.5-month median period in 2005 . The bank won on the lower court levels , and Michigan appealed to the Supreme Court.Critics of the OCC have long said the federal agency falls short in consumer protection and that it bases its regulatory decisions on maintaining the banks ' safety and soundness.In oral arguments , E. John Blanchard , who represented Michigan and whose case is supported by the 49 other states , argued that " preemption " of local authority by the OCC would prevent states from protecting their residents . In that way , they also are most like the cases the Supreme Court hears , said Donald R. Songer , a political scientist at the University of South Carolina who studies appellate courts.The idea of trying to gauge a judge 's ideology from his voting patterns on different types of cases is unpopular among law professors who prefer to study legal reasoning case by case . The Japanese people are primarily the descendants of various peoples who migrated from Asia in prehistoric times ; the dominant strain is N Asian or Mongoloid , with some Malay and Indonesian admixture . The Bush administration urged the Supreme Court to declare that legal immigrants can be deported for drug offenses that are felonies in some states but only misdemeanors under federal law , as the court heard its first oral arguments of the new term yesterday.At issue are provisions of the 1996 immigration law that require any noncitizen guilty of an " aggravated felony " to be sent back to his country of origin , with no chance to ask for leniency . Two hours of oral argument on a federal " partial birth " abortion ban at the Supreme Court yesterday showed that the justices are intensely focused on the procedure 's medical details and health implications - - but produced few clues as to how they might rule.As expected , the court 's four most liberal members , Justices John Paul Stevens , David H. Souter , Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer , sounded skeptical about the statute .