The justices held that a longtime school system employee in Tennessee can pursue a civil rights lawsuit over her firing.

The court voted to reverse the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that the anti-retaliation provision of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act does not apply to employees who merely cooperate with an internal probe rather than complain on their own or take part in a formal investigation.

The Cincinnati-based court was alone among federal appeals courts in its narrow view of the civil rights law, which was already understood to bar retaliation against people who complained about harassment and other discrimination.

"The question here is whether this protection extends to an employee who speaks out about discrimination not on her own initiative, but in answering questions during an employer's internal investigation. We hold that it does," Justice David Souter said for the court.

Vicky Crawford was fired in 2003 after more than 30 years as an employee of the school system for Nashville, Tenn., and Davidson County.

Dennis Jerome Foust of Montague faces trial in Oceana County Circuit Court on two counts of felonious assault and a misdemeanor count of domestic violence. The 33-year-old also is charged as a habitual offender, which could result in a longer prison sentence if he is convicted.

Police say Foust and his wife fought Jan. 9 during the wake for Shawn Davila, who died on New Year's Day from methanol alcohol poisoning.

Two men were stabbed after intervening in the fight. They were treated and released.

But his arrest on federal corruption charges has clearly complicated his work as the state's chief executive and already cost the state some $20 million. The state is facing a potential $2.5 billion budget deficit and the governor doesn't have the same horsepower — or clout — to address the problem that he had just a month ago.

No one in the state capital trusts Blagojevich enough to give him authority to trim the budget on his own, as he requested in November. Any other idea he advances would probably be rejected out of hand. Yet no other official can take the lead.

"Everything just comes to a halt. You have complete paralysis," said House Republican Leader Tom Cross of Oswego.

Blagojevich, a second-term Democrat, was arrested Dec. 9 on charges accusing him of scheming to swap President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat for profit, shaking down a hospital executive for campaign donations and other wrongdoing.

The governor has defiantly insisted he's done nothing wrong and that he will not resign. His aides say he is going about business as usual.

The complaint, filed Tuesday in The Hague, follows a ruling by Italy's top criminal court ordering Berlin to pay euro1 million (US$1.4 million) in damages to nine relatives of victims of a June 1944 massacre in the Tuscan town of Civitella.

In the atrocity, German soldiers killed more than 200 civilians to avenge a deadly attack by partisans.

In its filing with the World Court, Germany argued that as a sovereign state it has immunity in Italian courts, and that any decision rendered in the Italian judiciary is unenforceable.

Germany, which says it has paid reparations for Nazi crimes under international treaties with Italy, rejected the ruling handed down by Italy's Court of Cassation two months ago.

German Foreign Ministry spokesman Jens Ploetner said seeking compensation for World War II crimes was "morally understandable but it is, in judicial terms, the wrong way to address this injustice, and so this ruling is not acceptable for us."

Compensation claims against Germany have been winding through the Italian judiciary since the late 1990s, when Luigi Ferrini sought restitution for his arrest and deportation to Germany in 1944 to work as a slave laborer in the Nazi armaments industry.

Germany fought the case, pleading immunity. Ferrini lost in two lower courts before the Court of Cassation overturned the previous decisions in 2004 and recognized Italian jurisdiction.