A state appeals court says a 15-year-old boy whose Web site was flooded with anti-gay slurs and threats can sue a schoolmate who admitted posting a menacing message but described it as a joke.

In a 2-1 ruling Monday, the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles said the violent language of the message - threatening to "rip out your ... heart and feed it to you" and to "pound your head in with an ice pick" - conveyed a harmful intent that is not protected by the right of free speech.

The dissenting justice, Frances Rothschild, said no one who read all the messages posted on the Web site - in which youths tried to outdo the others in outrageous insults - would interpret any of them as a serious threat.

The case is one of the first in California to examine the boundaries between free expression and so-called cyber-bullying. The court majority said a message that threatens physical harm, even if it wasn't meant to be serious, loses its First Amendment protection and can be grounds for a lawsuit.

The plaintiff, identified only as D.C., set up a Web site in 2005 to promote an entertainment career after recording an album and starring in a film. Believing - wrongly, the court said - that he was gay, some fellow students at a Los Angeles high school posted comments that mocked him, feigned sexual interest or threatened violence.

The boy's father said he withdrew D.C. from the school, at the suggestion of Los Angeles police, and moved the family to an undisclosed spot in Northern California. D.C. sued six students and their parents, claiming hate crimes, defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The ruling involved a claim by one defendant, a 16-year-old identified as R.R., that the suit interfered with his freedom of speech. In a court filing, R.R. said he didn't know D.C. personally but was offended by the Web site's self-promotional tone and "decided to add my own message to the Internet graffiti contest," posing as a parent who was so offended by D.C.'s singing that he wanted to kill him.

President Barack Obama has nominated the sister of National Public Radio legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg (TOH'-ten-burgh) for a federal judgeship.

Obama on Wednesday tapped Amy Totenberg for a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. She has been in private practice and has served as an arbitrator in Atlanta since 2000.

The Harvard Law School graduate also is a special master in federal court in Maryland and a court monitor in federal court in the District of Columbia.

Georgia's public defender system is still trying to recover its financial footing five years after a courthouse gunman racked up a $3 million taxpayer-funded defense tab on the way to his conviction.

The state's ailing system to defend the poor has struggled almost since its start in 2005, hamstrung not just by the costly Brian Nichols case but also because of the lukewarm support from legislators and a dismal economy.

The state now can't afford to pay to defend the accused in several capital punishment cases, leaving them waiting in jail for years before their trials start. Some, like Khan Dinh Phan, have appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court for help. They have asked that their cases be dismissed because the delays violated their right to a speedy trial.

Georgia has faced similar problems before. State legislators created the public defender system precisely because individual counties struggled to provide adequate legal defense for the poor. But prosecutors and defense attorneys say it may take drastic measures to recover from the Nichols' case, one of the statewide system's first high-profile tests.

Prosecutors said Nichols' defense should have cost about $500,000. But expenses ballooned with expert witnesses and attorneys fees. Nichols was spared death and sentenced to life in December 2008 for killing of a judge, a court reporter, a sheriff's deputy and a federal agent during the rampage.

Pratt & Whitney said Tuesday a federal appeals court granted the jet engine maker's request for an expedited appeal of a lawsuit it lost as it tries to move 1,000 jobs out of Connecticut.

The subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. filed five proposed issues in its appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of a Feb. 5 decision halting its plans to move engine repair jobs to Columbus, Ga., Japan and Singapore.

U.S. District Court Judge Janet C. Hall in Bridgeport ruled in favor of the Machinists union, which sued Pratt & Whitney to halt efforts to shift the jobs. The union said the company violated its contract with the union that requires it to make every effort to preserve jobs in Connecticut.

Among the issues Pratt & Whitney said it may raise is its contention that Hall was wrong in how she interpreted the definition of "every reasonable effort" to preserve jobs. Pratt & Whitney said it is not required to save jobs if it results in lower profit.

The company also said Hall substituted her own judgment for Pratt & Whitney's business judgment in how it measures profit and financial performance.

In a request filed last week, Pratt & Whitney said a decision is needed soon to avoid financial harm because the company plans to shut two Connecticut plants immediately after its union contract expires in December.

The court said the two parties may file legal papers in April and May and an appeal may be heard as early as the week of May 31.

A lawyer for the union would not immediately comment. The union's chief negotiator did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Gay and lesbian couples will soon be able to marry in Washington, but the debate over same-sex marriage has sounded different here, with references to interracial marriage and Martin Luther King.

Over the past year, both sides have courted the support of Washington's black community, a majority of the city's 600,000 residents and one traditionally perceived as opposed to same-sex marriage.

"In D.C., outreach to African-Americans wasn't part of the campaign. It was the campaign," said Michael Crawford, the leader of a pro-same-sex union group, D.C. For Marriage.

Crawford, who is black, said other residents weren't ignored, but his group and others weighed the city's racial makeup in planning their message. That made the debate here different than in other places that have considered gay marriage — places like California, where about 7 percent of residents are black, or Maine, where 1 percent are. Voters in both states struck down gay marriage laws.

In Washington, gay couples are expected to be able to apply for marriage licenses beginning Wednesday — but opponents are still challenging it in court.

Oklahoma City Council members hired a private law firm Tuesday to lead upcoming contract negotiations with the city’s police and firefighter unions.

The firm, McAfee and Taft, was hired in part because negotiations with the unions have gone poorly in recent years.

"It’s just broken,” Ward 4 Councilman Pete White said of recent negotiations with the public safety unions.

Two of the firm’s labor attorneys will be paid $225 an hour each to lead negotiations with the unions for the next fiscal year, according to a contract council members unanimously approved Tuesday.

City officials hope the arrangement helps improve a damaged relationship with the public safety unions.

"It’s just to put a new face on it,” White said. "The people that do the hardest jobs we have in this city are the police department and fire. For the relationship to be this acrimonious ... is not acceptable.”

City attorneys handled past negotiations and will assist with the upcoming negotiations.

The negotiations figure to be tense because the city will likely ask for concessions from its public safety unions in order to meet next year’s budget, which will be much smaller than this year’s.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied an appeal by Pacific Investment Management Co challenging class-action certification for a lawsuit alleging the world's largest bond fund manager tried to corner a market for U.S. Treasury note futures.

A U.S. appeals court in Chicago upheld a judge's ruling that certified as a class more than 1,000 investors who seek more than $600 million in damages.

Pimco, a Newport Beach, California-based unit of the German insurer Allianz SE appealed to the Supreme Court, but the justices turned down the appeal in a brief order without any comment.

The lawsuit accused Pimco of boosting its percentage stake in futures contracts on some 10-year Treasury notes to 42 percent from 12 percent over a two-week span in the spring of 2005. The relevant contracts traded on the Chicago Board of Trade.

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, Pimco argued that class-action status should not have been granted because some plaintiffs did not lose money and the class suffered from serious conflicts of interest that precluded certification.