The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Fransisco dismissed a lawsuit brought by former prisoners of the C.I.A. who claim that they were tortured in overseas prisons. The divided 6-5 decision is the latest episode of the ongoing legal drama over extraordinary rendition, a C.I.A. program that allegedly transfers prisoners to foreign countries in order to torture them.

The decision is a legal victory for the Obama administration, which has argued that such lawsuits are dangerous as they might expose state secrets. The argument of state secrecy was also used to obstruct lawsuits during the Bush administration.

In February 2007, the FBI and the Department of Justice announced that they would "do everything we can" to prosecute Civil Rights-era hate crimes. The Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative was an attempt to put federal dollars and manpower into closing unsolved murder cases. However, these crimes are more than 40 years old. Few of the cases have been solved and key suspects are dying.