A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld the nation's first-of-its-kind law in California prohibiting health practitioners from offering psychotherapy aimed at making gay youth straight. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, in a 3-to-0 decision, ruled that the state's ban on conversion therapy for minors doesn't violate the free speech rights of licensed counselors and patients seeking treatment. The case before the appeals court was brought by professionals who practice sexual-orientation change therapy, two families who say their teenage sons benefited from it, and a national association of Christian mental health counselors. The law was supposed to take effect at the beginning of the year but was put on hold. Thursday's ruling reverses the injunction. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) this month signed a law that would also outlaw conversion therapy in his state. Man arrested for threats to lawmaker The FBI has arrested a man accused of making violent threats against freshman Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) - threats that included her decapitation. Aniruddha Sherbow was arrested Wednesday in Tijuana, Mexico, and turned over to FBI agents in San Diego, according to the FBI. He is set to appear in court Friday before being returned to Washington. He is charged with transmission of threats in interstate commerce. The FBI said Sherbow sent the threats to them earlier this month. "I, Aniruddha Sherbow, with the Divine as my witness, do hereby solemnly vow to find Tulsi Gabbard, wheresoever she may be, and to sever her head from her body," he wrote, according to local reports. In 2011, a judge issued a three-year restraining order against Sherbow after several threatening and abusive phone calls and text messages to Gabbard, who was then a city councilwoman. Bombing suspect's friend is indicted A friend of the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect was indicted Thursday for allegedly making false statements to authorities. Prosecutors said Robel Phillipos faces up to 16 years in prison in connection with two federal criminal counts. But attorneys for the 19-year-old say he will continue to fight the allegations against him. Following Phillipos's arrest in May, a judge ordered him released on $100,000 bond, putting him on home confinement and electronic monitoring. Phillipos met bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 20, while they were students at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. The April 15 bombing killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, two other friends of Tsarnaev's, already have pleaded not guilty to allegations they conspired to obstruct justice by agreeing to destroy and conceal some of his belongings as he evaded authorities after the attack. Plaintiffs get partial win in no-fly-list case A federal judge has ruled that people placed on the U.S. government's no-fly list have a constitutionally protected interest in traveling by air, and the right to due process when it's denied. U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown of Portland rejected the government's assertion that people on the no-fly list can travel by other means and that being on the list does not deprive them of their liberty. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of 13 people on the no-fly list. The plaintiffs want to be removed from the list or told why they are on it. Brown's late Wednesday decision is only a partial one. She asked the government for more information about its redress procedure to help her determine whether it satisfies due process. Lost kittens halt N.Y. subway lines for hours: It only took two kittens to stop New York City's subway in its tracks. Power was cut to the B and Q lines in Brooklyn for more than an hour after a woman reported Thursday morning that her kittens were loose in the nation's largest subway system, transit officials said. The furry felines were finally found on the tracks and rescued about seven hours later. How they got there was a mystery. While the effort on behalf of the kittens created delays for passengers, the Q operated a shuttle service between two of its normal Brooklyn stops. Red worms in water in Okla. town: Residents of Colcord are being asked to avoid drinking tap water until the local utility is sure it has gotten rid of tiny red worms that wriggled into the water system. Worms ranging from a half-inch to an inch long showed up this week in the water supply in the small town near the Arkansas border, about 80 miles east of Tulsa. Apparently, it is fine to take showers with the invertebrates.