Federal Judge

Competitive cheerleading — which, like figure-skating and diving, is decided by judges — has been judged not a sport by a judge in Connecticut. U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill ruled that Quinnipiac College could not eliminate its women's volleyball team and replace it with the 36-member cheerleading squad to both save money and pump up its Title IX women's numbers. The judge ruled that cheerleading might someday be considered a sport, but it is not one now. "Today, the activity is still too underdeveloped and disorganized to be treated as offering genuine varsity athletic participation opportunities for students," the judge ruled.

A wide-reaching and drawn-out legal fight over alleged trading violations in the mutual fund industry could soon be over, with federal judges in Baltimore expected to decide this fall whether to approve settlements that could total hundreds of millions of dollars. Numerous class-action lawsuits were filed on behalf of millions of investors across the U.S. as early as 2003, accusing mutual fund companies of breaching securities laws. Investor complaints in separate cases against 17 mutual fund families were transferred in 2004 to U.S. District Court in Baltimore for coordinated proceedings.

A federal judge has denied a bid by Perdue Farms and an Eastern Shore chicken grower to dismiss a lawsuit accusing them of polluting a Chesapeake Bay tributary, clearing the way for trial on the potentially pioneering legal case. Judge William M. Nickerson of the U.S. District Court in Baltimore ruled Tuesday that the lawsuit brought this year by the Waterkeeper Alliance could go forward, though he struck two environmental groups as plaintiffs on a technicality. The Waterkeeper Alliance, the Assateague Coastal Trust and Assateague Coastkeeper Kathy Phillips filed suit in March alleging that harmful levels of bacteria and nutrient pollution were flowing from a drainage ditch on a Worcester County farm into a branch of the Pocomoke River.

Pastor Marcus Johnson of New Harvest Ministries stood outside Baltimore's City Hall on Thursday and asked a crowd of about 100 to pray out loud and unrestrained. A federal judge's ruling last month that the law that directs the president to proclaim a National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional did not diminish the enthusiasm of the faithful, who held Bibles, waved American flags and raised their hands to the heavens. "I have been called to pray," Johnson said. "If I am standing in line at the supermarket or the bank, I can pray.

A 20-year-old from Bethesda linked to a plot to try to kill then-presidential-candidate Barack Obama was sentenced to 61 months in prison Tuesday by a federal judge who said he had gone well beyond innocent role-playing. "Nobody was assassinated. Nobody was wounded. Nobody was injured. But you were on the cusp," U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte told Collin McKenzie-Gude. The judge technically sentenced McKenzie-Gude on his earlier guilty plea of storing bomb-making chemicals in his bedroom.

FLORENCE MARIE COOPER, 69 Federal judge U.S. District Judge Florence Marie Cooper, whose reputation for brilliance and fairness made her a star of the federal judiciary, died Friday of lymphoma. She was 69. Cooper, who rose from a legal secretary to judgeships in state and federal courts, died at a Santa Monica, Calif., hospital where she was being treated, Chief Judge Audrey B. Collins announced. Cooper made headlines dismissing a case against accused Chinese spy Katrina Leung on grounds of governmental misconduct.

A federal court judge on Wednesday dismissed Baltimore's landmark lawsuit against Wells Fargo & Co., saying it was "not plausible" that the mortgage giant triggered millions of dollars in damages, as the city claimed, by causing increased foreclosures through racist, predatory lending. "The alleged connection is even more implausible when considered against the background of other factors leading to the deterioration of the inner city," U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz explained in a six-page memorandum opinion accompanying the dismissal order.

A federal judge dismissed Thursday a second lawsuit against Howard County government and current and former county officials, which alleged improper decisions on land use in approving sites for two supermarkets - the Wegmans in Columbia and a Harris Teeter planned at Turf Valley. U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz agreed with county lawyers that the lawsuit, filed by Frank Martin, Carvel Mays, Phillip Rousseau and Paul F. Kendall, was basically a repeat of one he dismissed in July that is now on appeal.

WASHINGTON - -It has been nine years since federal District Judge Andre M. Davis of Baltimore was first nominated to fill the so-called Maryland seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. It's been seven months since President Barack Obama renominated Davis for the same position - which has remained vacant because of the political stalemate in Washington since the death of Judge Francis D. Murnaghan Jr. in August 2000. And it has been more than five months since the Senate Judiciary Committee, on a bipartisan vote, cleared Davis for confirmation by the full Senate.