A federal appeals court is about to consider a lawsuit challenging Michigan's ban against racial preferences in public university admissions and government hiring.

Civil rights groups and University of Michigan students, faculty and applicants say the 2006 ballot measure approved by voters is unconstitutional.

Critics say the constitutional amendment has created an unfair process where universities give weight to geographical diversity and legacy status but not racial identity.

Supporters say the law reflects the will of the people.

Arguments will be held Tuesday morning at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. A district judge dismissed a challenge to the law last year.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered a disbarred civil rights lawyer convicted in a terrorism case to go to prison and said a judge must consider whether her sentence of a little more than two years behind bars was too lenient.

Lynne Stewart, 70, has been free on appeal since she was sentenced in 2006. The three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its nearly 200-page ruling almost two years after hearing arguments in the case.

Stewart was sentenced to two years and four months in prison after she was found guilty of passing messages between her client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, and senior members of an Egyptian-based terrorist organization.

The appeals court suggested that the sentence was too lenient, especially when compared with the 20-month prison term given to her co-defendant, Mohammed Yousry, a translator who was working for her. The appeals court said the sentencing judge can also reconsider the sentences of Yousry and Ahmed Abdel Sattar, a former postal worker, depending on what the judge decides with Stewart.

The court also ordered Yousry to begin serving his sentence. Sattar is already serving his 24-year sentence.

In its ruling, the appeals court said Stewart must be resentenced because Judge John G. Koeltl declined to determine at sentencing whether Stewart committed perjury when she testified at her trial.

A federal appeals court says a former HealthSouth executive should go to prison for his role in a huge accounting fraud at the Birmingham-based rehabilitation chain.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that probation isn't enough punishment for Ken Livesay, who pleaded guilty to inflating earnings at HealthSouth.

Federal judges have sentenced Livesay to probation three times for his role in the HealthSouth fraud. Prosecutors appealed each time, claiming the sentences were too lenient.

The 11th Circuit agreed with the government's arguments a third time and went a step further, saying no amount of probation is enough for Livesay. The case now goes back to a district court judge.

Apparently, no one told Sonia Sotomayor that Supreme Court justices are supposed to be circumspect, emerging from their marble palace mainly to dispense legal wisdom to law schools, judges' conferences and lawyers' meetings.

Since becoming the first Hispanic justice, Sotomayor has mamboed with movie stars, exchanged smooches with musicians at the White House and thrown out the first pitch for her beloved New York Yankees. A famous jazz composer even wrote a song about her: "Wise Latina Woman."

In short, Sotomayor has become a celebrity — all without having made a single major decision at the nation's highest court.

It's not that other justices don't have their own particular glamour.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia — both opera lovers — recently had roles in the opening performance of "Ariadne auf Naxos" for the Washington National Opera. Other justices have done tours to promote their books.

But that kind of fame rarely reaches the man on the street.

Few Americans can name most of the justices. "Many, many, many more Americans can name the Seven Dwarfs than they can the people on the Supreme Court," said Bob Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University.

Wyoming lawmakers will soon take up the thorny issue of whether to impose new taxes on wind energy development, a proposal that developers say could stunt the fledgling industry's growth in Wyoming.

Supporters of a new tax say it's only fair for wind projects to contribute to state and local governments equal to other energy industries. Opponents say Wyoming taxes are already high compared to surrounding states and any new tax would be premature.

The Joint Revenue Committee will consider two proposals to tax wind electricity generation at a Wednesday meeting in Cheyenne.

"I am hopeful that this legislative session will develop some means for there to be state and local revenues derived from the development of wind resources in the coming decades," Gov. Dave Freudenthal said recently. "You can pretty clearly demonstrate that (the wind industry) is not overly taxed and they certainly don't make the contribution that other forms of energy do."

The Wyoming Power Producers Coalition, representing 15 wind development companies, is fighting any new wind tax in the upcoming legislative session.

Executive Director Cheryl Riley said developers are willing to pay their fair share of taxes, but the state has time to come up with an appropriate tax because development is slowed down by a transmission bottleneck and ongoing land management issues related to the sage grouse, she said.

The Cleveland Rape Crisis Center is launching a special hot line in hopes of hearing from those who survived encounters at the house where remains of 11 women were found.

Police say the women were lured to the home of registered sex offender Anthony Sowell with the promise of alcohol or getting high. Authorities say Sowell then strangled them and left their bodies in his house or buried in the backyard.

Sowell remains in jail on $6 million bond on five preliminary charges of aggravated murder.

The hot line, opening Monday, will be staffed 24 hours a day by a licensed therapist.

Sowell pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges in an alleged attack on a woman at his home in September. That case led to the discovery of the bodies.