A village outside New York City has decided to appeal to a federal court ruling that led to an unusual voting system and the election of its first Hispanic trustee.

The Port Chester board of trustees voted 4-2 Tuesday night to hire a law firm to appeal a finding that local elections were unfair to Hispanics.

The board authorized up to $225,000 in taxpayer funds for the appeal, an amount that would grow if the case were retried. The village spent about $1.2 million on the original case.

"We are confident we have a powerful appeal," village spokesman Aldo Vitagliano said Wednesday. He said a recent Supreme Court case has bolstered Port Chester's contention that white support for Hispanic candidates in previous elections was strong enough to satisfy the federal Voting Rights Act.

In a letter to the Journal News of White Plains earlier this month, trustee Joseph Kenner said an appeal could "remove the shameful and unwarranted stigma of the judge's ruling."

The Department of Justice, which brought the case, had no comment, said spokesman Herb Hadad.

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal challenging campaign disclosure laws in Washington state.

The court on Tuesday let stand without comment a federal appeals court ruling that upheld the state's disclosure requirements. Human Life of Washington challenged the requirements as a violation of the First Amendment. The group didn't want to reveal its donors in a 2008 campaign opposing an assisted suicide ballot measure.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the disclosure requirements "have become an important part of our First Amendment tradition."

A former juvenile court judge defiantly insisted he never accepted money for sending large numbers of children to detention centers even after he was convicted of racketeering for taking a $1 million kickback from the builder of the for-profit lockups.

Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella was allowed to remain free pending sentencing following his conviction Friday in what prosecutors said was a "kids for cash" scheme that ranks among the biggest courtroom frauds in U.S. history.

Ciavarella, 61, left the bench in disgrace two years ago after he and a second judge, Michael Conahan, were accused of using juvenile delinquents as pawns in a plot to get rich. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has dismissed 4,000 juvenile convictions issued by Ciavarella, saying he sentenced young offenders without regard for their constitutional rights.

Ciavarella maintained the payments were legal and denied that he incarcerated youths for money.

"Never took a dime to send a kid anywhere. ... Never happened. Never, ever happened. This case was about extortions and kickbacks, not about 'kids for cash,'" said Ciavarella, who plans to appeal.

But in the end, Superior Court Judge Henry Hall ruled Wednesday that none of that counted. What mattered, the judge said, was that the six had illegally raised their salaries to 20 times above what state law allows and would have to stand trial on nearly two dozen felony counts of misappropriation of public funds. He ordered them to return to court March 2 for arraignment.

In a lengthy, strongly worded statement from the bench that several defense attorneys said caught them by surprise, Hall suggested the six could have been charged with even more crimes. He also ordered that they stay 100 yards away from City Hall and not engage in any government activity involving Bell.

"I find this is a matter of grave public safety to the people of Bell," he said in issuing his stay-away order. He added that he had considered putting five of the six who are free on bail back in jail to ensure compliance, but decided not to go that far.

When told by Mayor Oscar Hernandez's attorney that his order would effectively shut down Bell's city government, Hall replied that Hernandez and other officials had been skipping City Council meetings for months since the Bell salary scandal broke, preventing the council from having enough members to meet anyway.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has asked parties in a federal lawsuit to file briefs by Feb. 28 on whether a state law that limits non-economic damages in civil cases is constitutional.

The issue was raised by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans in January. The 5th Circuit asked the Supreme Court about the constitutionality of the law before it rules in a case involving a traffic accident.

The law on non-economic caps puts a $1 million limit on what juries can award someone for such things as pain and suffering. The limits on damages were adopted by Mississippi lawmakers after years of contentious wrangling over tort reform.

Documents filed Monday night in Houston claim Kevin Lacy, BP's former senior vice president for drilling operations for the Gulf of Mexico, reached a mutual agreement with the company to resign in December 2009 because he believed the company was not adequately committed to improving safety protocols in offshore drilling operations to the level of its industry peers. The Deepwater Horizon rig explosion occurred on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

The claims come in an amended version of the lawsuit, originally filed last year, that alleges BP inflated its stock price by hiding information and making false and misleading statements about its safety practices before the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. BP's stock value dropped roughly in half following the oil rig explosion and spill.