Jefferson argued that the first-of-its-kind raid trampled congressional independence. The Constitution prohibits the executive branch from using its law enforcement powers to interfere with the lawmaking process. The Justice Department said that declaring the search unconstitutional would essentially prohibit the FBI from ever looking at a lawmaker's documents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected that claim. The court held that, while the search itself was constitutional, FBI agents crossed the line when they viewed every record in the office without giving Jefferson the chance to argue that some documents involved legislative business.

"The review of the Congressman's paper files when the search was executed exposed legislative material to the Executive" and violated the Constitution, the court wrote. "The Congressman is entitled to the return of documents that the court determines to be privileged."

The raid was part of a 16-month international bribery investigation of Jefferson, who allegedly accepted $100,000 from a telecommunications businessman, $90,000 of which was later recovered in a freezer in the congressman's Washington home.

Jefferson pleaded not guilty in June to charges of soliciting more than $500,000 in bribes while using his office to broker business deals in Africa. The Justice Department said it built that case without using the disputed documents from the raid.

The court did not rule whether, because portions of the search were illegal, prosecutors should be barred from using any of the records in their case against Jefferson. That will be decided by the federal judge in Virginia who is presiding over the criminal case.

"Today's opinion underscores the fact that the Department of Justice is required to follow the law, and that it is bound to abide by the Constitution," defense attorney Robert Trout, said, promising more legal challenges to "overreaching by the government in this case."

The Justice Department did not immediately return messages seeking comment on the decision. Officials have said they took extraordinary steps, including using an FBI "filter team" not involved in the case to review the congressional documents. Government attorneys said the Constitution was not intended to shield lawmakers from prosecution for political corruption.

The court was not convinced. It said the Constitution insists that lawmakers must be free from any intrusion into their congressional duties. Such intrusion, even by a filter team, "may therefore chill the exchange of views with respect to legislative activity," the court held.

The case has cut across political party lines. Former House Speakers Newt Gingrich, a Republican, and Thomas Foley, a Democrat, filed legal documents opposing the raid, along with former House Minority Leader Bob Michel, a Republican.

Conservative groups Judicial Watch and the Washington Legal Foundation were joined by the liberal Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in supporting the legality of the raid.

Following his indictment, Jefferson's supporters accused the Bush administration of targeting black Democrats to shift attention from the legal troubles of Republican congressmen.

"We are confident that as this case moves forward, and when all of the facts are known, we will prevail again and clear Congressman Jefferson's name," Trout said Friday.

Despite the looming investigation, Jefferson was re-elected to a ninth term in 2006. His win complicated things for Democratic leaders who promised to run the most ethical Congress in history.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., stripped Jefferson of his seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee and placed him instead on the Small Business Committee. He resigned that committee assignment after being indicted.

The case was considered by Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson and Judge Judith W. Rogers.

It also has triggered a push in Congress this week to pass temporary legislation that would protect parts of a controversial eavesdropping program launched by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The administration and Democrats are at odds over how to address the issue, leading to concerns that it might not be resolved before Congress starts its August recess Monday.

This week, congressional leaders have alluded to the recent decision by the court, which was created in 1978 as part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a television interview Tuesday evening: "There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) said Wednesday that "recent technical developments" had convinced him that "we must take some immediate but interim step to improve collection of foreign intelligence in a manner that doesn't compromise civil liberties of U.S. citizens."

Neither Rockefeller nor Boehner would elaborate, but U.S. intelligence and congressional officials familiar with the matter said they were referring to the FISA court ruling.

Boehner's remarks suggest that the ruling imposed new restrictions on the National Security Agency's ability to intercept communications that are between people overseas but that "transit" U.S. data networks operated by Internet service providers and telecommunications companies.

But other officials said the ruling's reach was broader, affecting cases "where one end is foreign and you don't know where the other is" — meaning warrants would be required even when it was unclear whether communications were crossing the United States or involved a person in the United States.

One official said the issue centered on a ruling in which a FISA court judge rejected a government application for a "basket warrant" — a term that refers to court approval for surveillance activity encompassing multiple targets, rather than warrants issued on a case-by-case basis for surveillance of specific terrorism suspects.

"One FISA judge approved this, and then a second FISA judge didn't," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the activities of the FISA court are classified.

The precise effect of the ruling is unclear, but a second official said that it "reduced the amount of intelligence we were collecting" on overseas terrorism suspects.

National Intelligence Director J. Michael McConnell has called attention to the issue in public testimony, telling a Senate committee May 1 that U.S. spy agencies are "actually missing a significant portion of what we should be getting" because of legal obstacles. But he has refused to identify the cause or nature of that intelligence gap.

The recent FISA court ruling was a blow to the Bush administration, which had bypassed the court when it launched the NSA program in 2001. The White House moved it back under the FISA court's supervision last year after Democrats won control of Congress and appeared poised to challenge the constitutionality of a program that monitored U.S. residents' communications without warrants.

The ruling comes at a time when U.S. intelligence agencies have warned that Al Qaeda has regrouped and is refocusing its energies on striking the U.S.

The issue has become the center of a fierce new debate on Capitol Hill over how to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to get a special court's approval before monitoring communications of people in the U.S. Public records show that the court rejects few of the government's requests: In 2005, for example, it approved 2,072 applications and denied none; in 2006 it approved 2,176 and denied, in part, one.

This week, unable to agree on a broader overhaul, the Bush administration and congressional leaders have turned instead to passing temporary legislation designed to address concerns raised about the recent court ruling. Even so, they remain at odds over the FISA court's role.

Democrats have proposed a temporary fix that would give the FISA court new authority to grant court orders covering "certain aggregated foreign collection while protecting rights and privacy of U.S. persons."

But the Bush administration has pushed for broader language eliminating any requirement for a court order in cases where the target is "reasonably believed to be outside of the United States." Instead, the attorney general would have power to authorize NSA surveillance of foreign targets and to compel Internet and telecommunications companies in the United States to comply with requests for data or access to the communications flowing through their networks.

That provision has prompted significant resistance from Democrats, many of whom have been calling for the resignation of Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales over allegations that he misled Congress or lied to lawmakers in testimony about NSA surveillance activities.

In an apparent concession to those concerns, the White House modified its proposal late Wednesday to include the national intelligence director in the approval process and to allow the FISA court to review certain activities.

Gonzales made a new attempt Wednesday to tamp down the controversy over his testimony, in which he has repeatedly said there were never serious disagreements within the Bush administration or the Justice Department over the warrantless surveillance program. His statements appear to be contradicted by testimony from other officials, including FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who said the program had raised serious concerns.

Gonzales acknowledged Wednesday that some NSA activities authorized by Bush after Sept. 11, 2001, "did precipitate very serious disagreement" within the administration. But he stood by remarks that the agency's warrantless tracking of international phone calls and e-mail of terrorism suspects — the activity the administration has described as the Terrorist Surveillance Program — did not generate serious dissent.

"This is not to say that the legal issues raised by the Terrorist Surveillance Program were insubstantial," Gonzales wrote in a letter to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It was an extraordinary activity that presented novel and difficult issues and was, as I understand, the subject of intense deliberations within the Department."

Doe's attorney, Thomas M. McNamara, said his client is seeking "the value of what McSheffrey and the diocese took from him that he'll never be able to regain. We'll let a jury decide what that is."

In 2005, the Hartford Archdiocese reached a $22 million settlement with 43 alleged clergy sex abuse victims. That settlement stemmed from abuse claims against 14 priests, including McSheffery.

McSheffery, now in his mid-70s, has been on administrative leave since 2002, when the first abuse allegations against him arose.

Doe, now in his 40s, can legally file the civil suit because of a state law passed in 2002 that extended the statute of limitations so that victims of child sexual abuse can file suits until they are 48.

New Haven attorney Hugh Keefe, who is representing McSheffery, had no comment on the most recent lawsuit, but emphasized that his client has not been convicted of any crime.

"Father McSheffery has not been found guilty either civilly or criminally in any court anywhere," Keefe said Wednesday.

The Rev. John Gatzak, director of communication for the Archdiocese of Hartford, said he had no comment specifically about the most recent lawsuit, but said such allegations "cause us to think of the pain on the part of the victims and to redouble the church's efforts to make sure such abuse never occurs again."

"Discrimination has no place in our law, no place in our hearts and no place because of technicalities," said Rep. Robert Andrews, D-N.J.

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 on May 29 to throw out a Goodyear employee's complaint that she earned thousands of dollars less than her male counterparts because of discrimination.

Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'s plant in Gadsden, Ala., sued right before she retired. She ended a 19-year career making $6,500 less than the lowest-paid male supervisor, and claimed earlier decisions by her supervisors kept her from making more.

The court said she had waited too long to sue. Under the justices' decision, which they said was based on congressional legislation, an employee must sue within a 180-day deadline of a decision involving pay if the employee thinks it involved race, sex, religion or national origin.

That opens the door for corporations to discriminate, Democrats said. "If you can get away with it for 180 days, you're home free," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chair of the House Education and Labor Committee.

The Democrats' legislation would allow employees to sue within 180 days of their last affected paychecks. Senate Democrats are working on a similar bill.

Ledbetter, who will not be helped by the legislation, said she hopes it helps other people. "I just want to open the doors for women in the future so they can be treated fairly," she said in an interview.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill, and has enough votes in the House to make it stick.

The legislation "would allow employees to bring a claim of pay or other employment-related discrimination years or even decades after the alleged discrimination occurred," the White House said.

"Employers would be forced to defend against an avalanche of decades-old, frivolous claims. The anticipated increase in legal and record- keeping costs could be staggering," said Jay Timmons, the National Association of Manufacturers' senior vice president for policy and government relations.

House Republicans also said the measure was designed to benefit trial lawyers _ a Democratic constituency _ by giving them a new forum for thousands of lawsuits.

"Trial lawyers, you can be sure, are salivating at this prospect," said Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon of California, the ranking Republican on the Education and Labor Committee.

"The majority on the Supreme Court bent over backwards, ignoring both precedent and simple common sense, to rob (Ledbetter) of her right to equal treatment in the workplace," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. "The legislation passed today remedies that inequity and once again makes it possible for victims of discrimination to take their cases to court and receive fair hearings and just compensation."

"The Family Court has both staff and specialized programs in place to effectively and efficiently handle this serious problem facing our youth throughout the state," Jeremiah wrote in a letter to police chiefs.

The letter follows the death two weeks ago of a 17-year-old Barrington teenager who disappeared in a river while riding a kneeboard pulled by a motorboat. The boat operator, a classmate, faces charges including underage possession of alcohol and refusing to take a breath test.

The hearing boards handle juvenile cases in all but six of Rhode Island's 39 cities and towns, and police departments can decide whether to refer a teenager there or to Family Court.

Typically, Family Court handles more serious charges, and teenagers facing a second offense are also more likely to be sent there.

But Jeremiah is seeking to expand the reach of Family Court by asking police chiefs to refer all cases to Family Court that involve the juvenile equivalent of an adult misdemeanor offense, such as using fake identification to buy alcohol or underage possession of alcohol.

Among the Family Court services Jeremiah cited are organized trips to an emergency room to see the consequences of drunken driving and alcohol-related incidents.

Gonzales didn't mention this latest controversy, instead, sticking to his speech to law enforcement.

"My promise to this group and to the parents of America is that I'm committed. I will not rest, even after I'm no longer attorney general, until this nation is better able to shield our children from crimes," he said.

Gonzales has resisted calls from members of Congress to step down as attorney general. The White House defended Gonzales on Thursday against accusations he gave misleading testimony to Congress. A key Republican senator critical of Gonzales said there was no sign that President Bush's support for the attorney general was weakening.

Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, accompanied Bush on an Air Force One on a trip to Philadelphia. At a hearing on Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Republican had told Gonzales, "I do not find your testimony credible, candidly."

The senator Thursday that Bush was sticking by Gonzales out of personal loyalty, despite the attorney general's deteriorating support on Capitol Hill. "The hearing two days ago was devastating (for Gonzales). But so was the hearing before that and so was the hearing before that," Specter said.