High Court Rejects Chamber Ad Case

WASHINGTON — The nation’s best-known business lobby lost a U.S. Supreme Court appeal Tuesday, as the high court declined to enter a constitutional debate over use of campaign-style television advertisements in a state judicial election.

The court, without comment, turned aside a free-speech complaint from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The business lobby argued a Mississippi court violated its First Amendment right to free expression by blocking the chamber’s ads critical of three judicial candidates.

The chamber spent several hundred thousand dollars on last year’s state Supreme Court election in Mississippi, much of it for television ads that began airing three weeks before Election Day Nov.