Washington ? The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear the case of a U.S.-born man captured during fighting in Afghanistan and held without charges, the latest setback for the Bush administration and its assertion of broad new powers to prosecute the war on terrorism.

Over the administration’s objections, the court said it would consider the treatment of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a suspected Taliban foot soldier held at a U.S. naval brig in South Carolina. The government calls Hamdi an “enemy combatant” and says he is ineligible for ordinary legal protections.

The administration says it is reluctant to allow enemy combatants access to lawyers because that could greatly inhibit efforts to obtain information from them about potential terrorist operations.

Unlike almost all the others picked up overseas since the Sept. 11 attacks, Hamdi is an American citizen. He was born in Louisiana but was raised in Saudi Arabia.

Other terrorism cases are still at or near the high court’s doorstep, including the case of another U.S.-born terror suspect held indefinitely without access to lawyers. Jose Padilla, a former gang member and convert to Islam, was picked up in Chicago in 2002 and detained in connection with an alleged plot to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb.”

The Supreme Court could choose to consider the two cases together, simultaneously addressing the rights of U.S. citizens captured abroad as well as those picked up in the United States.

“The court has really drawn a line in the sand,” said Deborah Pearlstein, national security specialist at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. “It is recognizing that, yes, the executive has some wartime powers, but they are not unlimited.”