DETROIT ? Lawyers for the Justice Department and several Muslim groups squared off in Detroit federal court Wednesday in the first legal challenge to the USA Patriot Act.

“There can be no second-guessing Congress that this is an essential tool in the counterterrorism effort,” Justice Department lawyer Brian Boyle told U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood during a 90-minute hearing in a packed Detroit courtroom. Boyle urged Hood to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the national American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of six Muslim organizations.

“Our clients have already suffered concrete injuries — not speculative injuries — to their constitutional rights,” countered ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson, who argued that the case should go forward.

At issue is Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which President George W. Bush signed into law six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It broadened the government’s powers to combat terrorism by making it easier to obtain surveillance and search warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a top-secret panel of district judges in Washington, D.C.

The six nonprofit groups that provide religious, medical, social and educational services to Muslims and people of Arab descent filed the lawsuit in July. They want Hood to declare Section 215 unconstitutional.

Beeson told Hood on Wednesday that the FBI wasn’t required to offer evidence to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to justify obtaining a warrant to seize membership lists from political groups, find out what books people are checking out at the library, or what they’re telling social service agencies about medical and family problems.

Boyle said the groups are overdramatizing the issue. “The reality of this case is much, much less exciting,” he told Hood.