The state's largest teachers union is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to rule that recently enacted legislation affecting public school employees is unconstitutional.

A special-action lawsuit filed Monday by the Arizona Education Association challenges legislation dealing with such topics as teachers' seniority rights in layoffs and deadlines for school districts to decide whether to renew contracts.

The AEA contends the legislation approved last summer was illegal on several grounds. The union says it wasn't included as a topic for a special legislative session called on budget matters.

House Speaker Kirk Adams defends the legislation as valid. He says policy determinations are a long-standing part of budget-making.

New York's top court ruled Tuesday that the state can use eminent domain to force homeowners and businesses to sell their properties for a massive development in Brooklyn that includes a new arena for the New Jersey Nets.

In a 6-1 ruling Tuesday, the Court of Appeals said the Empire State Development Corp.'s finding that the area was blighted was enough to justify taking the land.

A group of tenants and owners claim the seizure is unconstitutional. They argue that developer Bruce Ratner's proposed $4.9 billion, 22-acre Atlantic Yards project mainly enriches private interests, while the state constitution requires public use for taking land.

"The constitution accords government broad power to take and clear substandard and insanitary areas for redevelopment," Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman wrote for the majority. "In so doing, it commensurately deprives the judiciary of grounds to interfere with the exercise."

Ratner's proposed development includes office towers, apartments and a new arena for the NBA's Nets. A key element in his plan is selling majority team ownership to Russian entrepreneur Mikhail Prokhorov.

General Motors Co. has sued a supplier over problems with steering columns that have so far cost the automaker more than $30 million to fix.

The Detroit automaker is seeking damages from JTEKT North America Inc. and subsidiary JTEKT Automotive Virginia Inc. for problems associated with steering products used in the Chevrolet Cobalt and other GM vehicles since 2005.

GM claims the steering columns "had excessive gear backlash, thereby causing the columns to rattle under certain driving conditions."

Problems with the parts resulted in an "unexpectedly high number" of warranty claims and complaints about "unusual rattles, 'clunks' or other noises emanating from the steering assemblies in their vehicles," GM alleges in the lawsuit, originally filed in Macomb County Circuit Court but moved last week to federal court in Detroit.

While the problem has already cost GM more than $30 million, the automaker said it expects the bill will rise as GM customers file additional warranty claims.

A riding lawn mower may have four wheels, a powerful engine and can cost as much as a used car. If it's stolen, however, the Georgia Supreme Court concluded Monday that it's not a motor vehicle.

The 4-3 decision overturned the conviction of Franklin Lloyd Harris, who was convicted of felony motor vehicle theft after he loaded a Toro riding mower in 2006 from a Home Depot in Dalton into his van and sped away. Because Harris was a repeat offender, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Public defender Michael McCarthy told the justices that while Harris should still be charged with theft, he shouldn't be punished as if he had stolen a car. A riding mower is many things, a modern mechanical marvel among them, but McCarthy said it's not a motor vehicle under state law.

Prosecutors countered that the state defines a "motor vehicle" as a "self-propelled" device, and there's no doubt a riding mower meets that standard.

The state's top court agreed, concluding in an 18-page decision that the sentence should be overturned because the purpose of a riding mower is to cut grass, not transport people.

New York's highest court ruled Monday that families forced to pay high phone rates to talk to relatives in state prison won't receive refunds for the cost.

The lawsuit was first brought by the inmates' families in 2004.

In a 5-1 decision, the Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court's ruling that the families failed to assert legitimate claims under the state constitution.

The court found that the fee was bad public policy, but didn't qualify as being unconstitutional.

Defense organizations and relatives of inmates argued that the state had illegally collected millions of dollars through a prison telephone service contract. They said the state's contract with MCI Worldcom Communication violated the state constitution. The contract has since been taken over by Verizon.

"We're very disappointed," said Rachel Meeropol, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. The center has represented families in the case.

A veteran dissident was sentenced to three years in prison after casting a spotlight on poorly built schools that collapsed and killed thousands of children during China's massive earthquake last year — an apparent government attempt to squelch such information.

Huang Qi, founder of a human rights Web site, had been charged with illegally possessing state secrets, his wife Zeng Li said Monday by telephone. His detention in June 2008 came after several posts on his blog that criticized the government's response to the massive earthquake that struck Sichuan province a month earlier and killed about 90,000 people.

Huang, 46, had alleged that state-controlled media provided skewed reports on relief efforts and accused the government of obstructing the work of non-governmental organizations responding to the disaster, according to reports at the time by Paris-based monitoring group Reporters Without Borders.