Kenyetta Whipper, James' mother, contacted Liberty Counsel and met with Barbee. Liberty Counsel officials said they also sent a letter to the school's principal explaining that schools "cannot censor our religious speech" in events like a talent show for which students choose their own material to perform.

The lawsuit is one more symptom of a softening housing market. The median price of an existing condo in Lee County has fallen 38 percent from February 2006, at $353,900, the highest on record, to $218,800 in August 2007, the last month available, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. For single-family homes, the price has fallen 22 percent from the all-time high of $322,300 in December 2005 to $250,800 in August 2007.

Builders in Southwest Florida are seeing such challenges more and more, said Christopher Shields, a real estate attorney with the Pavese law firm in Fort Myers.

"Potential purchasers are trying to get out of their contracts," he said. "Typically in a rising market, it doesn't matter whether or not a developer has committed violations at all, the buyer goes ahead and closes because he thinks the property is going to be worth more next year."

Now that prices are soft, however, "They look for reasons where perhaps the developer is in violation of federal and state disclosure requirements."

Some recent examples of similar suits by both buyers and builders trying to make the best of contracts signed in better times:

• A federal class action lawsuit brought by people who bought houses from First Home Builders alleges that they were defrauded by the developer and real estate brokerage D'Alessandro & Woodyard in a program to sell homes as an investment with a guaranteed rate of return.

• Advantage Builders of America in March sued 13 people for more than $15,000 in damages and attorneys' fees because they entered into contracts to buy houses in Lehigh Acres and Cape Coral but didn't make payments.

• The builders of Sail Harbour in February asked the court to force 29 people to close on their deals in the south Fort Myers development.

The suit against WCI was filed in federal court by David Berry and John Schrenkel, who signed up to buy Unit 1202 in the Florencia building at The Colony Golf & Bay Club in Estero.

They say WCI ran afoul of the Interstate Land Sale Act, which regulates the sale or lease of land from developers.

In this case, WCI violated the act by neglecting to include a provision in the contract giving a buyer 20 days to make things right after being notified that he's in default of the contract, said Miami-based attorney Robert Cooper, who filed the suit.

That means, he said, that "if some purchaser accidentally fails to do x, y or z, the builder can't just take the deposit."

In this case, Schrenkel and Berry want out of the contract and their $115,000 deposit returned.

But WCI attorney Thomas Roehn told Cooper in a July 2 letter that it's all just a misunderstanding. "Inadvertently, the 20 days notice of default and opportunity to cure was provided to the seller rather than the purchaser."

That means the buyers aren't entitled to their money back, the letter says. "WCI looks forward to Mr. Schrenkel and Mr. Berry closing upon their purchase of Unit 1202 at Florencia."

Cooper filed the case anyway, seeking damages for his clients and any other Florencia buyer in the same situation.

He said this is the first case he's seen in which the 20-day default protection for the buyer was left out. "I have not seen other developers screw this provision up."

If successful, the suit would be the latest bad news for WCI, which reported a $33 million loss for the quarter ending June 30 as condo tower sales all but dried up and traditional home sales were sluggish.

On Aug. 30, billionaire investor Carl Icahn gained influence on the company's board as he, two close associates, three incumbents and three jointly nominated members were elected to the board.

The case involved Khaled el-Masri, who says he was detained while on vacation in Macedonia in late 2003, transported by the United States to Afghanistan and held there for five months in a secret prison before being taken to Albania and set free, evidently having been mistaken for a terrorism suspect with a similar name.

Mr. Masri says he was tortured while in the prison. After prosecutors in Germany investigated the case, a court there issued arrest warrants in January for 13 agents of the Central Intelligence Agency. The German Parliament is continuing to investigate the episode, which has become a very public example of the United States government’s program of "extraordinary rendition."

Mr. Masri, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, brought a lawsuit in federal court against George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence from 1997 to 2004; three private airline companies; and 20 people identified only as John Doe. He sought damages for treatment that he said violated both the Constitution and international law.

Shortly after he filed the lawsuit in December 2005, the government intervened to seek its dismissal under the state secrets privilege, asserting that to have to provide evidence in the case would compromise national security. That argument succeeded in the Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., which dismissed the case without permitting Mr. Masri’s lawyers to take discovery. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., upheld the dismissal in March.

In their Supreme Court appeal, El-Masri v. United States, No. 06-1613, Mr. Masri’s lawyers argued that these rulings allowed the state secrets doctrine to become "unmoored" from its origins as a rule to be invoked to shield specific evidence in a lawsuit against the government, rather than to dismiss an entire case before any evidence was produced.

The Supreme Court created the doctrine in a 1953 decision, United States v. Reynolds, which began as a lawsuit by survivors of three civilians who had died in the crash of a military aircraft. In pretrial discovery, the plaintiffs sought the official accident report.

But the government, asserting that the report included information about the plane’s secret mission and the equipment that it was testing, refused to reveal it. The Supreme Court upheld the government, ruling that evidence should not be disclosed when "there is a reasonable danger that compulsion of the evidence will expose military matters which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged."

Mr. Masri’s lawyers argued that this decision, which the court has occasionally invoked but has not revisited, did not justify dismissing a case before any evidence was requested. Ben Wizner, Mr. Masri’s lawyer at the civil liberties union, said in an interview that the courts had permitted the doctrine to evolve from an evidentiary privilege to a broad grant of immunity, a way for the executive branch to shield itself from judicial scrutiny.

In this case, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement offered to let the justices see, "under appropriate security measures," the classified declaration that the government filed in the lower courts to support its claim of privilege. The court evidently did not think that step was necessary.

The court will soon have other opportunities to revisit the state secrets issue. Last week the A.C.L.U. filed an appeal that raises the issue as part of a challenge to the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without court warrants.

The case has been closely watched by educators. Almost seven million students nationwide receive special-education services, with 71,000 educated in private schools at public expense, according to the federal Education Department. Usually, districts agree to pay for those services after conceding that they cannot provide suitable ones.

New York City pays for private schools for more than 7,000 severely handicapped children because it agrees that it cannot properly instruct them. But, officials said, requests for tuition payments for special education students by parents who have placed their children in private school on their own have more than doubled in five years, to 3,675 in 2006 from 1,519 in 2002. And the cost of these payments grew to more than $57 million in the last school year.

“The trend has been increasing for several years,” said Michael Best, general counsel for the city’s Education Department.

Leonard Koerner, chief of the New York City Law Department’s appeals division, said: “We are very disappointed in the court’s ruling, because it does not require the parents to place their children initially in the public school system. This detracts from schools’ abilities to work with parents for the best possible educational outcomes for children with disabilities.”

But Mr. Koerner noted that the ruling did not set a precedent that would bind all schools in the country, and he expressed hope that the justices would soon consider the issues again. That seems likely. At least one other circuit court has come to a conclusion opposite from that of the Second Circuit.

Moreover, there is another Second Circuit case, from Hyde Park, N.Y., that is already available for review.

The justices last February decided to hear arguments in the New York City case and not the Hyde Park one, but Justice Kennedy’s decision to recuse himself only 12 days before the New York City case was argued created the possibility of the 4-4 tie and could make the court inclined to take up the issue again this winter. The court gave no reason for Mr. Kennedy’s lack of participation.

Both the New York and Hyde Park cases involve interpretations of a landmark 1975 special education law now known as the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act and amendments to it in 1997. The law requires school systems to provide a “free appropriate” public education to disabled students, with individually tailored programs.

The law permits parents to seek public financing for private schools if they can show that the public schools cannot meet their children’s needs.

Mr. Freston’s fight on behalf of his son began a decade ago, when his son, then 8, was found to have learning disabilities.

The city offered the child a coveted spot in the Lower Laboratory School for Gifted Education, on the Upper East Side, but Mr. Freston wanted a smaller setting and put his child in the private Stephen Gaynor School. He won tuition reimbursements through administrative hearings and an appeals board proceeding.

Then the Board of Education sued in federal court, where a district judge ruled that a family could not receive tuition reimbursement unless a child first attended public school. But the Second Circuit court found for Mr. Freston, sending the case to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Freston, who left Viacom with a separation package worth an estimated $85 million, has said he brought the case on principle and has donated his tuition reimbursement to tutoring for public school children.

The Hyde Park case involves a boy born in 1991 to a crack-addicted mother and suffering from learning disabilities. The child’s adoptive parents placed him in a private school after turning down the public school programs designed for him. A federal district judge ruled that the parents were entitled to tuition reimbursement, and the Second Circuit agreed.