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.

Six couples plus the surviving partner from a seventh filed a motion Thursday claiming the state continues to discriminate against them even though it offers civil unions to same-sex couples.

The original suit, filed in 2002, resulted in a 2006 New Jersey Supreme Court decision that came one vote short of requiring the state to legalize gay matrimony. After an effort to get lawmakers to legalize gay marriage, the effort fizzled out.

Opponents say that there's no constitutional right for gay couples to wed and that civil unions are working.

Gay marriage is legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Portillo does not face imminent extradition, however. Under Guatemalan law, he must first be tried at home in a separate corruption case before facing charges abroad.

Portillo vows to appeal Wednesday's ruling, saying: "This is not finished yet."

He is charged in a New York federal court with embezzling $1.5 million in foreign donations intended to buy school library books in Guatemala. He allegedly endorsed checks drawn from a New York bank and deposited them in a Miami account.

Portillo was president from 2000 to 2004. He was arrested Jan. 26 on the U.S. extradition request. He denies the charges.

AstraZeneca says a jury in Middlesex County Superior Court in New Jersey ruled in favor of the drugmaker.

The case was brought by a 61-year-old Louisiana man who claims he developed diabetes after taking the drug for a few years. Ted Baker, a Vietnam veteran, took Seroquel from 2001 through 2006.

The drug is approved for treating schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It's been on the market since 1997 and brings in more than $4 billion in annual sales.

Nine other cases brought by plaintiffs in New Jersey, Delaware and Florida have been dismissed before the start of a trial.

All the men argued that the state violated their Sixth Amendment due process rights because they were sentenced to death by a judge instead of a jury, as required under the 2002 federal decision.

But in a unanimous ruling handed down Friday, the Idaho Supreme Court noted that their cases were all appealed and the judgments made final before the U.S. Supreme Court ruling was issued — and that 2002 decision can't be retroactively applied to the Idaho inmates' cases.

All six inmates have appeals in various stages of state and federal court that will now move forward.

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.