The US Supreme Court has agreed to review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees may go to federal court to challenge their indefinite confinement.
The move is highly unusual and is a setback for the Bush administration, which had argued that a new law strips courts of their jurisdiction to hear detainee cases.
In April, the court turned down an identical request, although several justices indicated they could be persuaded otherwise.
The court did not indicate what changed the justices' minds about considering the issue. But last week, lawyers for the detainees filed a statement from a military lawyer in which he described the inadequacy of the process the administration has put forward as an alternative to a full-blown review by civilian courts.
In February, the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a key provision of a law the Bush administration pushed through Congress last year stripping federal courts of their ability to hear the detainees' challenges to their confinement.
On April 2, the Supreme denied the detainees' request to review the February appeals court ruling. The detainees then petitioned the court to reconsider its denial.
Dismissing the petitions would be "a profound deprivation" of the prisoners' right to speedy court review, lawyers for the detainees said.
The administration asked that the detainees' Supreme Court petitions be thrown out. Many of the 375 detainees have been held at Guantanamo for five years.
In recent months, the main arena in the legal battle over the detainees has been the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The appeals court is considering how to handle the detainees' challenges to military tribunals that found them to be enemy combatants, which left them without any of the legal rights accorded prisoners of war.
The White House is considering closing Guantanamo and transferring some of the most dangerous suspects to prisons in Kansas and South Carolina.
AP