The video game industry is sure to take notice after a federal appeals court ruled that Electronic Arts can be sued by a former college quarterback who alleges EA stole his likeness for its popular “NCAA Football” game.

Ryan Hart, who played for Rutgers from 2002 to 2005, may pursue his lawsuit against EA on allegations that the video game giant misappropriated his likeness for the popular video game.

The 2-1 decision (attached below) was delivered Tuesday by a panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. It reversed a district court decision which held that the depiction of college players in the video game was protected by the First Amendment right to free speech.

Hart sued EA in 2009, alleging it violated his right of publicity by using his likeness in the 2004, 2005 and 2006 installments of the “NCAA Football” game. The game’s quarterback shared Mr. Hart’s number, height, weight, helmet visor and the left wrist band he regularly wore in real life.

To earn a First Amendment shield, Electronic Arts had to show that it had transformed Mr. Hart’s identity to a significant degree. The majority of the appeals court panel held that EA had not done so.

“The digital Ryan Hart does what the actual Ryan Hart did while at Rutgers: he plays college football, in digital recreations of college football stadiums, filled with all the trappings of a college football game,” Circuit Judge Joseph Greenaway wrote for the majority. “This is not transformative.”

Meanwhile, the Ninth Circuit is considering a similar lawsuit filed by former Arizona State quarterback Sam Keller and other former players.

The relationship between government and religion will once again become a point of discussion at the U.S. Supreme Court, as the Justices agreed to consider whether a New York town could open meetings with a prayer.

Two residents sued Greece, New York, in 2008, saying it was endorsing Christianity, a violation of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of separation of church and state.

The Supreme Court ruled in a 1983 case, Marsh v. Chambers, that legislative sessions could begin with a prayer in most circumstances, citing the "unique history" of the practice throughout U.S. history.

The 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New York last year unanimously ruled against the city's policy in the attached ruling. Still, other courts around the country have found such invocations -- if inclusive and limited in scope -- to be permissible.

The petition will be argued later this year or early in 2014, with a ruling ready by the spring.

The adoptive parents of a child born with male and female organs say South Carolina mutilated their son by choosing a gender and having his male genitalia surgically removed.

The surgery took place when the child was 16 months old and a ward of the state, according to the attached lawsuit filed by the parents against three doctors and several members of the South Carolina Department of Social Services.

Lawyers for the parents said the complaints filed in federal and state courts are the first lawsuits of their kind filed in the United States.

The child, now 8 years old, feels more like a boy and “wants to be a normal boy,” Pamela Crawford, the boy’s adoptive mother, said in a video released by the Southern Poverty Law Center. “There was no medical reason that this decision had to be made at this time.”

The U.S. government secretly seized telephone records of The Associated Press for a two-month period in 2012 in a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news-gathering operations, the AP says.

AP Chief Executive Gary Pruitt, in a letter addressed to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, said the Justice Department seized records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012.

"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters," Pruitt said in the attached letter of protest.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

Dr. Phil’s production company has filed suit against Gawker Media for posting footage of the TV therapist’s interview with Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the man behind the Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax, on Deadspin.com.

The suit was filed Monday in a Texas federal court by Peteski Productions, one of the producers of the Dr. Phil show.

The complaint alleges the sports gossip website posted the juiciest parts of the interview online before it had aired in the majority of Dr. Phil markets.

In its copyright infringement lawsuit, Dr. Phil’s producers also include an artful “suckerfish” reference:

“A remora is a fish, sometimes called a suckerfish, which attaches itself to other fish like sharks,” the complaint states. “The host fish gains nothing from the relationship but the remora is enriched by obtaining benefits (usually food and transportation) from the host… Gawker received substantial benefits from its infringement but Pateski received nothing…”

California cities and counties are free to ban the sale and distribution of medical marijuana. Pot dispensaries can be banned via zoning laws, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The unanimous ruling, which approved a ban by the city of Riverside, is expected to spur more such bans statewide. About 200 communities now have zoning laws that exclude cannabis dispensaries.

Supporters of medical marijuana have argued that patients would be forced to drive hundreds of miles to obtain marijuana legally or to buy illegally on the street.

“While some counties and cities might consider themselves well-suited to accommodating medical marijuana dispensaries, conditions in other communities might lead to the reasonable decision that such facilities within their borders, even if carefully sited, well managed, and closely monitored, would present unacceptable local risks and burdens,” Justice Marvin Baxter wrote for the seven-member court.

Three college friends of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect removed a backpack with fireworks emptied of gunpowder from his dorm room three days after the attack, according to the attached FBI affidavit.

Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice. A third man, Robel Phillipos, is charged with making false statements to federal investigators.

The FBI affidavit says Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev agreed to get rid of the backpack after concluding from news reports that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was one of the bombers.

The FBI alleges that on the night of April 18, after the FBI released photos of the bombing suspects, the three men went to Tsarnaev's dorm room. The men noticed a backpack containing fireworks, which had been opened and emptied of powder.

Kadyrbayev knew when he saw the empty fireworks that Tsarnaev was involved in the bombings and decided to remove the backpack from the room "in order to help his friend Tsarnaev avoid trouble," the FBI said in the affidavit. He also decided to remove Tsarnaev's laptop.

After the three men returned to Kadyrbayev's and Tazhayakov's apartment with the backpack and computer, they watched news reports featuring photographs of Tsarnaev. The affidavit says Kadyrbayev told authorities the three men then "collectively decided to throw the backpack and fireworks into the trash because they did not want Tsarnaev to get into trouble."

Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev have been held in jail for more than a week on allegations they violated their student visas while attending UMass, The Associated Press reports.

People who test positive for smoking pot can legally be fired from their job, the Colorado Court of Appeals has ruled. So while recreational and medical marijuana is legal in Colorado, there is no employment protection for marijuana users.

A divided court upheld the firing of a man for off-the-job medical-marijuana use. The court reasoned that, because marijuana is illegal under federal law, employees have no protection to use it.

Brandon Coats is a quadriplegic medical-marijuana patient who was fired from his job as a telephone operator at Dish Network after testing positive for marijuana.

The case, decided 2-1, is the first to look at whether off-duty marijuana use that is legal under state law is protected by Colorado's Lawful Off-Duty Activities Statute, according to The Denver Post. The statute says employers can't fire employees for doing legal things off-the-clock.

A criminal complaint against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, has been filed in federal court. In charging Tsarnaev with using a "weapon of mass destruction," he would not be tried before a military tribunal as an "enemy combatant."

If convicted, Tsarnaev could face the death penalty, a Justice Department news statement said. The complaint said he had his initial court appearance Monday from his hospital room, where he is currently being treated for wounds sustained before his capture on Friday.

The Justice Department unsealed the attached criminal complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. It said he is "specifically charged with one count of using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction (namely, an improvised explosive device or IED) against persons and property within the United States resulting in death, and one count of malicious destruction of property by means of an explosive device resulting in death." The bombings resulted in the deaths of three people and injuries to more than 200, the department's news release said.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said that under U.S. law, American citizens such as Tsarnaev cannot be tried by before military commissions.

"[Tsarnaev] will not be treated as an enemy combatant," Carney said at a White House news briefing. "We will prosecute this terrorist through our civilian system of justice. Under U.S. law, United States citizens cannot be tried in military commissions."

The FBI has released images of two men who are suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings.

For the first time, the agency made public a video (attached below) and 8 photographs of the men who were seen in the vicinity of the attack that killed three people and injured about 180.

Investigators have asked for the public's help in their search for suspects. Anyone with any information, no matter how small, is urged to contact the FBI.

"Somebody out there knows these individuals as friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members of the suspects," FBI Special Agent Rick DesLauriers told a packed press briefing in Boston on Thursday. "And though it may be difficult, the nation is counting on those with information to come forward and provide it to us."