The court said in a 7-2 ruling that retaliation is another form of intentional, unlawful discrimination that is barred by the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was enacted to benefit newly freed blacks.

Business groups objected that the law does not expressly prohibit retaliation and said employees should have to file suit under another law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law has a shorter deadline for filing suit and caps the amount of money that a successful plaintiff may recover.

The Bush administration was on the side of the workers.

The provision of the 1866 law, known as section 1981, does not explicitly mention retaliation.

But Justice Stephen Breyer, in his majority opinion, said that previous Supreme Court decisions and congressional action make clear that retaliation is covered.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.

The case grew out of the firing of a black associate manager at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Bradley, Ill. Hedrick Humphries claimed he was fired after he complained about race discrimination by other Cracker Barrel supervisors.

The latest tussle over who has legitimate claim to what's "sexy" in tresses came late Friday, when Victoria's Secret filed court papers challenging a federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruling in favor of Sexy Hair Concepts LLC.

The board concluded in April 2007 that consumers were likely to confuse the lingerie giant's "So Sexy" trademark for hair-care items with Sexy Hair Concepts' various trademarks using the word "sexy" for its own coiffure line.

In papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Victoria's Secret said it wants the court to consider a study it conducted. The survey found only five of 308 people who bought hair-care products associated the word "sexy" with a single company and made any reference to Sexy Hair Concepts and its offerings.

The Columbus, Ohio-based company that also introduced the Very Sexy bra said its study proves "that the word `sexy' has not acquired distinctiveness among purchasers of hair care products."

Thus, it added, Sexy Hair Concepts "is not the owner of a family of trademarks in the word 'sexy.'"

In court papers filed earlier this month, Sexy Hair Concepts said it had used "Sexy Hair" to describe hair-care items since 1998. The company said it packages and promotes the "sexy" family of products to give "sexy" a distinctive commercial impression.

Sexy Hair Concepts applied to protect its trademarks for the "sexy" product line in November 2001, well before Victoria's Secret began testing some of its "So Sexy" coiffure products in April 2003, said Sexy Hair Concepts, based in Chatsworth, Calif.

Victoria's Secret has appealed the trademark board's ruling to a federal judge, who is considering only whether the board ruled correctly.

Sexy Hair said it sells tens of millions of dollars' worth of "Sexy Hair" products annually.

Earlier this year, Victoria's Secret chief executive Sharen Turney said her company might have become "too sexy" for its own good.

"We've so much gotten off our heritage ... too sexy, and we use the word sexy a lot and really have forgotten the ultra feminine," Turney told industry analysts.

Martin Mustapha will have to shell out thousands in court costs, instead of collecting the more than $345,000 he won in an Ontario court three years ago.

The Supreme Court of Canada agreed in a 9-0 judgment that Mustapha suffered real psychological harm, but Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said his reaction was so "unusual or extreme" that bottling company Culligan of Canada Ltd., should not have to pay compensation.

McLachlin said the legal test for damages is whether a person of "ordinary fortitude" would suffer psychological harm. In Mustapha's case, she concluded, the reaction was so unique that Culligan could not reasonably have foreseen the consequences and should not be held liable.

Mustapha insisted that he had been treated unfairly and said finding the dead fly in an unopened bottle of water in 2001 devastated him. He became obsessed with thoughts of dead flies, could not sleep and was constantly on edge — to the point that his business and even his sex life suffered.

"I'm just the type of person that is very clean and cautious about the health and well-being of myself and my family," Mustapha said.

He was diagnosed by several doctors as suffering from severe depression, anxiety and phobias.

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirms the same court's 2005 ruling striking down the law. The Supreme Court had ordered the appeals court to take another look at Virginia's statute after the ruling on the federal ban.

The appeals court cited a key difference between the federal and state bans on the procedure that abortion opponents call "partial-birth abortion." The federal law protects doctors who set out to perform a legal abortion that by accident becomes the banned procedure. The Virginia statute provides no such protection.

The state has two weeks to ask the full federal appeals court to review the ruling, or 90 days to appeal to the Supreme Court. The attorney general's office "is reviewing all possible courses of action," spokesman J. Tucker Martin said.

The state law is unconstitutional "because it imposes an undue burden on a woman's right to obtain an abortion," Judge M. Blane Michael wrote in the majority opinion, joined by Judge Diana Gribbon-Motz.

The court, in a 7-2 decision, upheld a law aimed at cracking down on the flourishing online exchange of illicit images of children.

Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, said Justice Antonin Scalia's narrow reading of the law in his majority opinion should result in "considerably less damage than it might otherwise have done." But Bertin said aggressive prosecutors still could try to punish people for innocent activity and put them "through a terrible ordeal."

The ruling upheld part of a 2003 law that also prohibits possession of child pornography. It replaced an earlier law the court had struck down as unconstitutional.

The new law sets a five-year mandatory prison term for promoting, or pandering, child pornography. It does not require that someone actually possesses child pornography.

Opponents have said the law could apply to movies like "Traffic" or "Titanic" that depict adolescent sex or the marketing of other material that may not be pornography.

Scalia, in his opinion for the court, said the law takes a reasonable approach to the issue by applying it to situations where the purveyor of the material believes or wants a listener to believe that he has actual child pornography.

First Amendment protections do not apply to "offers to provide or requests to obtain child pornography," Scalia said.

Likewise, he said, the law does not cover "the sorts of sex scenes found in R-rated movies."

Justice David Souter, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissented. Souter said promotion of images that are not real children engaging in pornography still could be the basis for prosecution under the law. Possession of those images, on the other hand, may not be prosecuted, he said.

"I believe that maintaining the First Amendment protection of expression we have previously held to cover fake child pornography requires a limit to the law's criminalization of pandering proposals," Souter said.

Scalia said the law would not apply to a situation in which both sender and recipient were talking about virtual images, not real pictures.

Jay Sekulow, a conservative public interest lawyer who filed a brief on behalf of members of Congress in favor of the law, said the decision reflects the importance of trying to cut down on child pornography on the Internet.

"The court understood, perhaps for the first time, how difficult and troubling the proliferation of online pornography is," said Sekulow, of the American Center for Law and Justice.

Monday's 6-3 decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, deals with provisions of the Armed Career Criminal Act. The law makes defendants eligible for longer prison terms if they have three prior criminal convictions for crimes that are either violent felonies or serious drug offenses.

A jury convicted Gino Gonzaga Rodriquez of possessing a gun as a convicted felon. Prosecutors said his five prior convictions — two for burglary in California and three for drug trafficking in Washington — should have led to a 15-year prison sentence.

But a federal judge imposed a sentence of 92 months and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed.

At issue was what makes a crime a serious drug offense. Judges sometimes look at the length of the sentence prescribed by state law.

In this case, the question was whether the additional time that state law imposed because someone is a repeat offender can be used to trigger the still harsher penalties under the federal sentencing law. The Supreme Court concluded it can.

Justice David Souter, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens, dissented. Souter said the court's ruling would make life more complicated for trial courts trying to calculate prison sentences.

The family of Steven Domalewski, who was 12 when he was struck by the ball in 2006, filed the lawsuit in state Superior Court. It names Hillerich & Bradsby Co., maker of the 31-inch, 19-ounce Louisville Slugger TPX Platinum bat used when Steven was hit.

The lawsuit also names Little League Baseball and Sports Authority, which sold the bat. It claims the defendants knew, or should have known, that the bat was dangerous for children to use, according to the family's attorney, Ernest Fronzuto.

"People who have children in youth sports are excited about the lawsuit from a public policy standpoint because they hope it can make the sport safer," Fronzuto said after filing the suit Monday morning. "There are also those who are skeptical of the lawsuit and don't see the connection between Steven's injury and the aluminum bat."

Little League denies any wrongdoing, as does the bat manufacturer. Sports Authority has not responded to several telephone messages seeking comment.

Steven was pitching in a Police Athletic League game when he was hit just above the heart by a line drive. His heart stopped beating and his brain was deprived of oxygen for 15 to 20 minutes, according to his doctors.

Although he was not playing in a Little League game, the organization is being sued because it gave its seal of approval to the bat, certifying it as safe for use by children, Fronzuto said.