Verizon says it has filed a court challenge to new federal regulations that prohibit broadband providers from interfering with Internet traffic flowing over their networks.

A divided Federal Communications Commission adopted the "network neutrality" rules last month. Verizon Communications Inc. filed the challenge Thursday in federal appeals court in the District of Columbia, it says.

The new rules prohibit phone and cable companies from favoring or discriminating against Internet content and services that travel over their networks — including online calling services such as Skype, Internet video services such as Netflix and other applications that compete with their core businesses.

In its court filing, Verizon argues that the FCC overstepped its authority in adopting the regulations.

The new rules are also expected to be challenged by Republicans in Congress.

A federal lawsuit accuses a Pennsylvania school district of imposing excessive and illegal fines on truant children or their families, including one parent ordered to pay $27,000 and a 17-year-old student fined more than $12,000.

The suit against the Lebanon School District, filed Thursday in Harrisburg by the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia on behalf of four parents and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, targets the court-imposed fines it says were above the state's limit of $300 per violation.

The suit seeks a class-action declaration and the return of any illegal money that the south-central Pennsylvania district collected. It also asks the court to stop the district from trying to collect any fines that violate state law and remain unpaid.

Superintendent Marianne Bartley has denied any wrongdoing by the district and referred calls Thursday to a lawyer. The lawyer, Rebecca Young, said that some of the law center's information in its public statements is inaccurate, but that she had not seen a copy of the lawsuit and could not comment on it.

A federal judge has rejected a challenge to Iowa's judicial nominating and retention system.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pratt on Wednesday granted Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller's request to dismiss the lawsuit filed by four conservative activists who claimed the system gives too much power to attorneys who elect members of the state's Judicial Nominating Commission. That panel recommends judicial appointments to the governor.

The lawsuit was filed after voters ousted three state Supreme Court justices for their role in a decision that legalized same-sex marriage in Iowa.

Iowa voters approved the nominating and retention system in 1962 but an attorney for the activists who filed the lawsuit claims it gives too much power to seven commission members who are elected by licensed attorneys.

In his decision, Pratt says the argument is "fatally flawed" and does not demonstrate a constitutional violation.

A day after the state Supreme Court required an election for governor this year, lawmakers appeared divided Wednesday over whether candidates should be nominated by party conventions or a special primary.

Tuesday's decision mandating a 2011 vote cited a state law that calls for nominating conventions. But the opinion also noted that the Legislature could change that as long as a general election winner can take office by Nov. 15.

The deadline is set one year after Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin began serving as acting governor when fellow Democrat Joe Manchin resigned to join the U.S. Senate. Although the state constitution provides for that succession route, the unanimous ruling concluded that it also requires an "elected successor within one year of the date when the vacancy occurred."

That and other legal findings in the opinion have revived questions over Tomblin's decision to focus on the role of chief executive while setting aside his legislative duties. The agenda Tomblin hopes to pursue during the 60-day session could suffer as a result, some key lawmakers said.

While expressing support for Tomblin, Senate Judiciary Chairman Corey Palumbo said, "He knows that he's only guaranteed one session, where previously he thought he might be (acting as governor) for two sessions. He's automatically a lame duck, so to speak, so I think it may give him a little bit less juice."

The ruling has also stoked the debate over the new Senate office of acting president - created for when the actual president is acting as governor - and the election of Marshall County Democrat Jeff Kessler to that post.

A financial firm that lost more than 650 employees in the Sept. 11 terror attacks must reduce its demands that an airline pay it nearly $1 billion, a judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein made the ruling regarding Cantor Fitzgerald after the company estimated it suffered $1 billion in lost profits because of the deaths of two-thirds of its work force at the World Trade Center.

The judge said Cantor Fitzgerald cannot base its estimate for damages on lost profits resulting from employees who died. He noted that the company had originally put losses at $102 million but raised them in 2009 to $1 billion before reducing them last year to $963 million.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to stop federal investigations into the private lives of people who want to work at government installations — even those who don't have security clearances and don't work on secret projects.

The high court turned away challenges to background checks of low-risk employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, despite claims from those federal contractors that the investigations were unconstitutional because they invaded their privacy.

"We reject the argument that the government, when it requests job-related personal information in an employment background check, has a constitutional burden to demonstrate that its questions are 'necessary' or the least restrictive means of furthering its interests," Justice Samuel Alito said.

Employees said the agency was invading their privacy by requiring investigations that looked into their medical records and asked friends about their finances and sex lives. If the workers didn't agree to the checks and fill out questionnaires on Standard Form 85 (SF-85) and Form 42, they were to be fired.