A Massachusetts law that sharply restricts out-of-state winemakers from shipping their products directly to consumers in the state is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled.

Thursday's decision by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a lower court ruling could open the door for connoisseurs in Massachusetts to purchase more of their favorite wines online or by mail order from domestic producers.

The law, approved by the Legislature in 2006 over the veto of then-Gov. Mitt Romney, created a multi-tiered system in which wineries that produce more than 30,000 gallons a year must decide whether to sell retail in Massachusetts through an in-state wholesaler or apply for a license to ship wines directly to consumers. They cannot, however, do both.

The cap does not affect any of the nearly three dozen wineries based in Massachusetts, all of which are small and produce under the 30,000-gallon limit.

"We hold that (the law) violates the Commerce Clause because the effect of its particular gallonage cap is to change the competitive balance between in-state and out-of-state wineries in a way that benefits Massachusetts's wineries and significantly burdens out-of-state competitors," the appellate court wrote in its decision.

As Delaware's first season of sports betting winds down, Governor Jack Markell says the state will challenge the federal Appeals Court ruling that limited the Delaware to offering parlay bets on NFL games.  Governor Markell's office confirms the First State will petition the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in August that shot down Delaware's plan to offer single game betting on all sports.

The state has retained the Washington D.C. firm of Sidley Austin to handle the appeal.  That firm specializes in Supreme Court work.

The decision to move forward is based in part on the willingness of the state's three racinos, Delaware Park, Dover Downs, and Harrington Raceway, to foot the bill for the appeal.  The three racinos are currently the only venues that can offer sports betting in Delaware.

Governor Markell's spokesman, Brian Selander, says the state will offer some new arguments in its appeal.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Delaware's plan to offer single game bets on all sports in late August, siding with the NFL, NCAA, and other pro leagues who challenged Delaware.  The Court ruled Delaware's sports betting plan violated the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which prohibits sports betting.  Delaware is one of four states with an exemption to PASPA, since it previously offered NFL parlay bets, but a three judge Third Circuit panel ruled narrowly that Delaware's exemption is limited to the same NFL parlay bets it offered back in 1976.

Chinese software developers over the Green Dam Youth Escort monitoring program suffered several targeted attacks earlier this week, when documents containing malicious exploits were sent to attorneys, the firm stated late Wednesday.

On Monday evening, lawyers at the firm of Gipson Hoffman & Pancione received e-mails that appeared to have been sent by associates, the group said in its statement. The Trojan e-mail messages contained either links to Web sites or attachments and were specially constructed to retrieve data from the victim's computer or the company's server.

"The specific source of the attacks has not yet been determined, but it appears that they attacks were initiated within China," the firm said in its statement.

Last week, filtering software firm CYBERsitter announced that it had retained Gipson Hoffman & Pancione to sue the Chinese government, two Chinese software developers and seven PC makers for allegedly distributing its software code as part of the Chinese state-sponsored filtering and monitoring program known as Green Dam Youth Escort. The latest incident follows Google's announcement on Tuesday that it was considering pulling out of China following serious attacks on its networks that resulted in stolen intellectual property and the surveillance of human-rights activists in China.

The attacks on law firm GHP are not the first attempt to infiltrate companies involved in the claims against China and Green Dam. Last summer, CYBERsitter also received two PDF files containing malicious code.

The law firm has contacted the FBI and the U.S. government and the incident is under investigation, according to its statement.

The Supreme Court split along ideological lines Wednesday as it barred a federal judge in San Francisco from broadcasting a high-profile trial involving same-sex marriage.

The court issued an unsigned opinion that said lower courts had not followed proper procedure in approving plans for the broadcast. The trial is to consider the constitutionality of Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage, and the Supreme Court cited arguments from proponents of the ban that releasing video of witnesses could subject them to harassment and even physical danger.

The court's liberal bloc -- joined for the first time in an ideological split by Sonia Sotomayor, the new justice -- issued a strong dissent. It said the court's "extraordinary legal relief" was unjustified.

The majority "identifies no real harm" from televising the trial, "let alone irreparable harm to justify its issuance of this stay," wrote Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who was joined by Sotomayor and Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "And the public interest weighs in favor of providing access to the courts."

The court on Monday blocked U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker's plan to stream live video from the trial, which started that day, to five courthouses across the country and to later release the proceedings for broadcast on YouTube. The justices' more complete ruling came at the end of the day Wednesday.

The Schwarzenegger administration filed an appeal Wednesday in a lawsuit over his furloughs of state workers, contesting a decision by the controller to restore pay for prison guards.

Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered some 200,000 state employees to take three days off a month without pay, cutting their paychecks by 14 percent to help close the state's budget gap. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association sued, arguing that guards are losing three days' pay each month, but can never take the time off because prisons operate around the clock.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch sided with the 30,000-member union last month. On Tuesday, state Controller John Chiang said he intends to restore guards' full pay to comply with that ruling. The guards' court victory does not affect about two dozen other union lawsuits opposing the furloughs.

Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the administration will impose layoffs and end guards' extra pay and pension benefits if an appeals court doesn't quickly block the decisions by Roesch and Chiang. The state filed the appeal in the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco.

The state Supreme Court on Wednesday denied tobacco companies' appeals of a San Francisco jury's award of $2.85 million in damages to the family of a woman who died of lung cancer after smoking cigarettes for 26 years.

Leslie Whiteley of Ojai sued Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds before her death in 2000 at age 40.

She testified that she started smoking at 13, using her lunch money to buy cigarettes, and paid little attention to the warning labels because tobacco companies promoted the benefits of smoking and the government allowed the sales. She smoked two packs a day until she was diagnosed with cancer in 1998.

A jury awarded Whiteley and her husband $1.7 million in compensation and $20 million in punitive damages four months before she died. It was the nation's first verdict in favor of a smoker who took up the habit after 1965, when the government first required warnings on cigarette packages.