The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirms that Internet service providers such as Yahoo Inc. are generally protected from liability for materials published or posted on their sites by outside parties.

Cecilia Barnes had filed a lawsuit in 2005 in Portland, Ore., claiming her boyfriend not only posted nude photos, but also created a fraudulent profile and posed as her in an online chat room to solicit sex.

Although the court says Yahoo isn't liable for those actions, it left open the possibility that Barnes could sue Yahoo over whether it had promised to remove the photos and the profile.

Thomas said Thursday that his chair was empty that day in November 2006 because he took a spill the night before.

"I had the wonderful opportunity to fall on my face one night and was not able to make oral argument the following day as a result of it," he said at a hearing of a House appropriations subcommittee on the court's budget for the next year.

Thomas didn't identify the arguments he missed, but court officials said later he was referring to the abortion case. Thomas voted to uphold the federal ban.

The accident came up Thursday as part of an account about how well the court's Web site works and a plea for an extra $800,000 for the site.

Since October 2006, the court has been making argument transcripts available the same day a case is argued.

"In order to stay up to speed on the case and what occurred at oral argument, I simply went to our Web site later that day and it was there," Thomas said.

But McMaster said in a filing with the Supreme Court on Monday that he won't oppose the state Supreme Court taking up the challenge filed last week by a Chapin High School student.

McMaster says the timing may not be right to shift the issues raised in the case from a public policy debate to the courtroom.

Instead, Kagan, confirmed by the Senate last month as solicitor general, will wait until the fall to make her debut, Justice Department spokeswoman Beverley Lumpkin said Tuesday.

By the time Kagan took up her post, Lumpkin said, most of the cases the court will hear in April already had been assigned.

"I suppose she could have spent the last several weeks doing nothing but preparing, but that's not something she wanted to do. There's a lot to do getting up to speed in the office," Lumpkin said.

The solicitor general typically handles the top cases before the court. The challenge to a provision of the Voting Rights Act, which will be argued April 29, is perhaps this term's highest-profile case.

Kagan has a most impressive resume — former Harvard Law School dean, Clinton White House official and Supreme Court clerk — but she has little courtroom experience.

The court said in a 5-4 decision that long delays before a suspect sees a judge can give the government too much leverage over someone who has been arrested.

"Federal agents would be free to question suspects for extended periods before bringing them out in the open, and we have always known what custodial secrecy leads to," Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion.

The prisoner in the case, Johnnie Corley, was arrested on suspicion of robbing a credit union in Norristown, Pa. The FBI agents who arrested him did not take him to court for his initial appearance for 29 1/2 hours, during which time they elicited a confession from Corley.

Under federal law and previous court decisions, confessions obtained within six hours of an arrest are presumed to be valid and may be used at trial. The question in Corley's case was what courts should do with confessions when there is a delay before the first court appearance.

The federal appeals court in Philadelphia said Corley's admission that he robbed the bank could be used against him, ruling that the confession was voluntary despite the delay.

_ Ruled for employers who want to force unionized workers to pursue their age discrimination claims through arbitration instead of a federal lawsuit. The court, in a 5-4 decision, said an arbitration agreement negotiated between an employer and a union that strips them of their option to take complaints to court is binding on workers. The dissenting justices said the high court in the past ruled that unions cannot bargain away employees' federal forum rights in discrimination cases.

_ Said the federal government should pay federally appointed lawyers for working on state clemency requests for death row inmates. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati had said that the law does not allow federal public defenders to be paid for working on state clemency requests. The high court disagreed and reversed that decision on a 7-2 vote.

_ Ruled that the government may consider cost in deciding whether to order power plants to undertake environmental upgrades that would protect fish. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said that the Clean Water Act does not allow cost to be used when deciding what technology would best minimize environmental impacts. But Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for a 6-3 majority, said even the appeals court and environmentalists "concede that some form of cost-benefit analysis is permitted."