A federal appeals court in New York has agreed that Connecticut school officials acted reasonably and constitutionally when they disciplined a student for an Internet posting she wrote off school grounds.

The 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan sided with Burlington, Conn., school officials. They punished Avery Doninger by preventing her from serving as class secretary as a senior.

The court said administrators at Lewis B. Mills High School acted reasonably after she made the 2007 posting criticizing administrators for canceling a popular school activity.

Doninger sued the administrators, alleging violation of free speech and equal protection rights. A lower judge also said school officials were entitled to immunity.

Two years after Texas became one of the last states to allow transgendered people to use proof of their sex change to get a marriage license, Republican lawmakers are trying to roll back the clock.

Advocates for the transgendered say a proposal to bar transgendered people from getting married smacks of discrimination and would put their legally granted marriages in danger of being nullified if challenged in court.

One of the Republican sponsors of the legislation said he's simply trying to clean up the 2009 law in a state that bans same-sex marriage under the constitution.

"The Texas Constitution," Sen. Tommy Williams said, "clearly defines marriage between one man and one woman."

The legislation by Williams, of Houston, and Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, of Brenham, would prohibit county and district clerks from using a court order recognizing a sex change as documentation to get married, effectively requiring the state to recognize a 1999 state appeals court decision that said in cases of marriage, gender is assigned at birth and sticks with a person throughout their life even if they have a sex change.

Most states allow transgendered people to get married using a court order that also allows them to change their driver's license, experts said. Some advocates for the transgendered say the Texas proposal would not only prevent future transgendered marriages but also open up the possibility that any current marriage could be nullified.

A lawyer has pleaded guilty to an insider trading charge in New York City, raising to 20 the number of defendants who've done so in what authorities call the largest hedge fund insider trading case ever.

Jason Goldfarb told a Manhattan federal court judge Thursday he made a "horrible mistake" by agreeing to accept money and arrange for secrets about mergers and acquisitions to be passed to a securities trader.

Goldfarb was among more than two dozen people charged. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud. Sentencing is Aug. 19.

Goldfarb's 2009 arrest came as part of the Galleon Group hedge fund prosecution.

Galleon founder Raj Rajaratnam (rahj rah-juh-RUHT'-nuhm) is on trial now. Prosecutors say the Sri Lanka-born Wall Street heavyweight used "corporate spies" to get rich off inside trades. He insists he was merely a savvy investor.

An appeals court on Friday resurrected the case against four Blackwater Worldwide guards involved in a 2007 shooting in a Baghdad public square that killed 17 Iraqi citizens.

A federal trial judge in Washington, Ricardo Urbina, threw out the case on New Year's Eve 2009 after he found the Justice Department mishandled evidence and violated the guards' constitutional rights.

But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Friday that Urbina wrongly interpreted the law. It ordered that he reconsider whether there was any tainted evidence against four of the five defendants —former Marines Evan Liberty of Rochester, N.H.; Donald Ball of West Valley City, Utah; and Dustin Heard of Knoxville, Tenn.; and Army veteran Paul Slough from Keller, Texas.

The Justice Department has dismissed charges against the fifth defendant, Nick Slatten, a former U.S. Army sergeant from Sparta, Tenn.

Blackwater security contractors were guarding U.S. diplomats when the guards opened fire in Nisoor Square, a crowded Baghdad intersection, on Sept. 16, 2007. Seventeen people were killed, including women and children, and 20 others wounded in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraq.

A top House Democrat is taking legal steps to force the names of political donors to be disclosed.

Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission Thursday, challenging a regulation allowing independent groups spending money on political campaigns to shield the identities of their donors.

Van Hollen's lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Washington.

Since a Supreme Court ruling last year cleared the way for corporations and independent groups to spend freely on campaign activity, many have done so using money from anonymous donors.

Van Hollen said that practice violated an existing law requiring donor disclosure.