Justices Decline to Hear Appeal From Chinese Detainees

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Monday that it would not hear an appeal from five Chinese Muslims detained at Guantánamo Bay who seek to be released into the United States. There were no noted dissents, but Justice Stephen G. Breyer, joined by three other justices, issued a statement explaining their reasoning.

The prisoners, from the largely Muslim Uighur region of western China, were captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. They have been determined by the government to pose no threat to the United States, and Justice Breyer wrote that all concerned agree that their detention is “without lawful cause.” The prisoners do not want to be returned to China, where they are considered terrorists and fear torture or execution.

The question in the case, Justice Breyer wrote, is whether judges may order the prisoners to be released here over the government’s objection.

The Supreme Court agreed in 2009 to decide that question, but it dismissed the earlier case last year after the government told the court that it had obtained resettlement offers from Palau, an island nation in the Pacific, and an unidentified second country.

In an unsigned decision last year, the Supreme Court returned the case to the lower courts for further proceedings in light of those developments. “No court has yet ruled in this case in light of the new facts,” the decision said, “and we decline to be the first.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which had ruled against the prisoners the first time around, did so again. In a concurring opinion in that decision from which Justice Breyer quoted on Monday, Judge Judith W. Rogers wrote that the prisoners had not contended that they would have been subject to mistreatment had they accepted the resettlement offers, and that the government deemed the solution appropriate.

Justice Breyer also noted that the government remained willing, in its words, once again to “discuss the matter with the government of Palau” and that it “continues to work to find other options for resettlement.”

Given all of that, Justice Breyer wrote, “I see no government-imposed obstacle to petitioners’ timely release and appropriate resettlement.” But he added that the prisoners remained free to return to court “should circumstances materially change.”

Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined Justice Breyer’s statement. Justice Elena Kagan was disqualified from the case because she had worked on it as solicitor general.

Her absence made a ruling for the prisoners unlikely had the court agreed to hear the case, Kiyemba v. Obama, No. 10-775, and the more liberal justices may have taken account of that in voting not to hear it.

The justices took no action Monday on Virginia’s unusual request that its challenge to the recent health care law be heard by the Supreme Court before an appeals court has had a chance to weigh in. The case is Virginia v. Sebelius, No. 10-1014.