The overturning of Virginia’s gay marriage ban places the legal fight over same-sex unions increasingly in the hands of federal appeals courts shaped by President Barack Obama’s two election victories.

It’s no accident that Virginia has become a key testing ground for federal judges’ willingness to embrace same-sex marriage after last year’s strongly worded pro-gay rights ruling by the Supreme Court. Judges appointed by Democratic presidents have a 10-5 edge over Republicans on the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, formerly among the nation’s most conservative appeals courts.

Nationally, three other federal appeals courts will soon take up the right of same-sex couples to marry, too, in Ohio, Colorado and California. The San Francisco-based 9th circuit is dominated by judges appointed by Democratic presidents. The Denver-based court, home of the 10th circuit, has shifted from a Republican advantage to an even split between the parties, while the 6th circuit, based in Cincinnati, remains relatively unchanged in favor of Republicans during Obama’s tenure.

U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen’s ruling Thursday, that same-sex couples in Virginia have the same constitutional right to marry as heterosexuals, represented the strongest advance in the South for advocates of gay marriage. She put her own ruling on hold while it is being appealed.

The Alaska Supreme Court on Wednesday handed Alaska municipalities a victory in a dispute over the value of the trans-Alaska pipeline, affirming that the structure for 2006 should have been valued at nearly $10 billion, not the $850 million claimed by pipeline owners.

The justices backed a Superior Court ruling that based the value of the pipeline on replacement costs, not fees paid to the owners for use of the pipeline.

The higher value means more tax revenue for municipalities through which the pipeline runs, especially the North Slope Borough, the Fairbanks North Star Borough and the city of Valdez, the parties in the lawsuit. The municipalities have long argued that pipeline owners have undervalued the 800-mile pipeline and tanker-loading facilities in Valdez.

"I've got a smile on my face today," Fairbanks North Star Borough Mayor Luke Hopkins said. "The Supreme Court validated what our position has been all along."

State Rep. Dave Guttenberg, D-Fairbanks, in a prepared statement praised the municipalities for seeking additional revenue and faulted the state for not intervening.

A Texas appeals court on Thursday overturned a judge's ruling that had voided the marriage of a transgender widow whose firefighter husband died battling a blaze.

The 13th Texas Court of Appeals sent the case of Nikki Araguz back to the lower court, saying "there is a genuine issue of material fact regarding sex and whether the marriage was a same sex marriage."

In 2011, state District Judge Randy Clapp in Wharton County ruled that the marriage between Nikki Araguz and her husband Thomas Araguz was "void as a matter of law."

Thomas Araguz's mother and his first wife had challenged the marriage's validity, arguing the fallen firefighter's estate should go to his two sons because Nikki Araguz was born a man and Texas does not recognize same-sex marriage.

Nikki Araguz, 38, had argued in court she had done everything medically and legally possible to show she is female and was legally married under Texas law and that she's entitled to widow's benefits.

Kent Rutter, Nikki Araguz's attorney, said his client was very pleased by Thursday's ruling.

"This decision recognizes that transgender Texans have the right to marry the person that they love," he said.

Attorneys for Simona Longoria, Thomas Araguz's mother, and Heather Delgado, his ex-wife, did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

A federal appeals court on Thursday reinstated a shareholders lawsuit filed against BP Alaska in the wake of two oil spills in 2006 on the North Slope that exposed problems with the company's pipeline maintenance program.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the U.S. District Court of Western Washington on several claims.


Shareholders sued BP in 2008, claiming management made misleading statements about the conditions of the company's pipelines, and its maintenance and leak detection program after the first spill of 200,000 gallons onto the North Slope tundra two years earlier. The lawsuit claims BP made the statements knowingly or with deliberate recklessness.

The shareholders claim BP's share price fell 4 percent after the second spill five months later and the subsequent field shutdown for maintenance.

The Associated Press left messages seeking comment for attorneys on both sides of the case.

BP spokeswoman Dawn Patience said in an emailed statement that the company had not had an opportunity to study the decision, so "it would not be appropriate to comment."

BP Exploration Alaska Inc. was fined $20 million in 2007 after pleading guilty to a federal environmental crime for failing to prevent the crude spill, the largest ever at Prudhoe Bay.

The problems became known after the March 2006 spill prompted the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency to open an investigation into maintenance practices at the 30-year-old field.

They found that thick sludge caked along the bottom of the leaky pipe was protecting colonies of bacteria that produce a corrosive acid. The acid had eaten an almond-sized hole in the steel over the course of several years, and that's where the spill occurred.

Maine's highest court is scheduled to hear arguments in a legal dispute over the environmental cleanup of the former HoltraChem Manufacturing Co. plant in Orrington.

The Portland Press Herald reports that the Supreme Judicial Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday on an appeal by Mallinckrodt LLC, a St. Louis-based pharmaceutical company that inherited responsibility for the site after HoltraChem went bankrupt. Mallinckrodt is seeking to overturn an order that it must complete an environmental cleanup that could cost $250 million.

The chemical plant used mercury in its manufacturing processes and dumped waste directly into the Penobscot River. The plant later deposited waste in five landfills on its 235-acre campus.

Mallinckrodt contends in its appeal that the Maine Board of Environmental Protection overstepped its legal authority in ordering the cleanup.

The longest-serving current justice of the California Supreme Court announced Tuesday that she is retiring.

Justice Joyce Kennard notified Gov. Jerry Brown that she intends to step down on April 5, ending her 24-year tenure as a member of the state's highest court.

"The state and its people have been very well served by Justice Kennard," Brown said in a statement on Tuesday. "Her independence and intellectual fortitude have left a lasting mark on the Court."

Former Gov. George Deukmejian appointed Kennard to the Supreme Court in 1989, The San Jose Mercury News reported. She previously was a Los Angeles trial judge and an appeals court justice for a brief time before being elevated to the State Supreme Court.

Kennard, 72, has a unique personal history, according to the Mercury News, because she is a native of Indonesia, moved to the Netherlands as a teenager and lost part of her right leg to a tumor, forcing her to walk with a prosthetic the rest of her life.

Kennard moved to the United States in 1961, settling in Southern California. She earned her law degree from the University of Southern California.

In her tenure on the court, she became famous for interjecting questions during oral arguments, often turning them into lengthy speeches before pointing her finger at a lawyer and demanding an answer. Despite being an appointee of the conservative Deukmejian, she was often unpredictable in her rulings and would come down on the more liberal side of social issues before the court.

Kennard was in the 4-3 majority that in 2008 struck down California's long-standing ban on gay marriage, a ruling that preceded voter approval of Proposition 8 — which restored the same-sex marriage ban until the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated it last year.