News in Brief

When officials at Downey High School in Southern California prevented a paid advertisement that displayed the Ten Commandments from being placed on the centerfield fence of the school’s baseball field, they did not violate the U.S. Constitution, a federal appeals court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, ruled without dissent that the 19,600-student district could "exclude subjects from the nonpublic forum that would be disruptive to the educational purpose of the school."

A lawsuit was filed in 1996 by a local businessman who claimed his First Amendment rights to free speech were violated after his paid billboard was removed because...