On June 23, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court gave full faith and credit to the judgments of state courts by upholding a Texas probate court judgment that determined the appropriate disposition of the assets of a wealthy Texan who died in 1995. The decision was a victory for WLF, which filed a brief urging the Court to uphold the Texas judgment. The Court agreed with WLF that a federal bankruptcy court in California exceeded its powers under the Constitution when it sought to exercise jurisdiction over disposition of those assets. The Court stated that bankruptcy judges are not Article III judges (meaning that they lack the attributes of regular federal judges, such as life-tenure) and thus are not permitted to decide state-law issues of this sort. The Court held that bankruptcy judges are empowered to decide most claims that are filed against an individual who has filed a bankruptcy petition, but they have far more limited authority to decide claims that the debtor asserts against others.