The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the United Nations is absolutely immune from such a lawsuit, and its former employees also have immunity.

The ruling upheld a lower court judge's decision to toss out a lawsuit brought by U.S. citizen Cynthia Brzak. She had alleged that ex-refugee chief Ruud Lubbers grabbed her in a sexual manner after a December 2003 business meeting in his Geneva office.

Lubbers resigned from the position in February 2005 because of the attention caused by the scandal. He's also the former prime minister of the Netherlands.

Anastasia Kelly, the former top in-house lawyer for American International Group Inc. who resigned Dec. 30 over compensation issues, has joined DLA Piper's Washington office, the firm announced today.

Kelly joins DLA Piper as of counsel. "She has a well earned reputation as the go-to counsel for companies in difficult circumstances and she will be a tremendous asset for our clients as they navigate this volatile market and these challenging times," DLA Piper Global Chairman Francis Burch said in a statement.

Frank "Rusty" Conner, the managing partner of DLA Piper's Washington office, said via e-mail that Kelly has worked at DLA Piper before. Kelly was not immediately available for comment. She joined AIG in 2006, and was named a vice chairman of the company in January 2009, after the insurance giant received a public bailout during the financial crisis. Before going to AIG, she was an executive vice president and general counsel of MCI/WorldCom, another company that faced the aftermath of an accounting scandal. She was a partner at the firm then known as Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering.
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The high court overturned a lower court decision throwing out a settlement between freelancers, publishers and database owners including Reed Elsevier Inc., educational publisher and owner of the LexisNexis information service.

The proposed settlement covers freelancers who registered the copyright to their works as well as those who didn't. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York had said courts generally don't have authority over infringement claims on works that are not copyrighted.

Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed, writing that the lower court did have authority to approve the settlement.

The lawsuit followed a Supreme Court ruling in 2001 that freelance writers have online rights to their work. The case largely applied to articles, photographs and illustrations that were produced 15 or more years ago, before freelance contracts provided for the material's electronic use.

The Supreme Court appeared willing Tuesday to say that the Constitution's right to possess guns limits state and local regulation of firearms. But the justices also suggested that some gun control measures might not be affected.

The court heard arguments in a case that challenges handgun bans in the Chicago area by asking the high court to extend to state and local jurisdictions the sweep of its 2008 decision striking down a gun ban in the federal enclave of Washington, D.C.

The biggest questions before the court seemed to be how, rather than whether, to issue such a ruling and whether some regulation of firearms could survive. On the latter point, Justice Antonin Scalia said the majority opinion he wrote in the 2008 case "said as much."

The extent of gun rights are "still going to be subject to the political process," said Chief Justice John Roberts, who was in the majority in 2008.

At the very least, Tuesday's argument suggested that courts could be very busy in the years ahead determining precisely which gun laws are allowed under the Second Amendment's "right to keep and bear arms," and which must be stricken.

James Feldman, a Washington-based lawyer representing Chicago, urged the court to reject the challenges to the gun laws in Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park, Ill. Handguns have been banned in those two places for nearly 30 years.

The court has held that most of the rest of the Bill of Rights applies to state and local laws. But Feldman said the Second Amendment should be treated differently because guns are different. "Firearms are designed to injure and kill," he said.

Over the past year, both sides have courted the support of Washington's black community, a majority of the city's 600,000 residents and one traditionally perceived as opposed to same-sex marriage.

"In D.C., outreach to African-Americans wasn't part of the campaign. It was the campaign," said Michael Crawford, the leader of a pro-same-sex union group, D.C. For Marriage.

Crawford, who is black, said other residents weren't ignored, but his group and others weighed the city's racial makeup in planning their message. That made the debate here different than in other places that have considered gay marriage — places like California, where about 7 percent of residents are black, or Maine, where 1 percent are. Voters in both states struck down gay marriage laws.

In Washington, gay couples are expected to be able to apply for marriage licenses beginning Wednesday — but opponents are still challenging it in court.