WASHINGTON -- Rejecting the advice of the Bush administration, the U.S. Supreme Court said yesterday that it will hear a challenge by a former driver for Osama bin Laden to the legality of using military commissions to try suspected terrorists.

The decision to hear Salim Ahmed Hamdan's appeal was a defeat for the Bush administration, which had told the court that it should wait until Mr. Hamdan's trial took place before deciding whether he was denied due process.

The justices will review a ruling last July from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that President Bush has the authority to bring the al-Qaida leader's driver and other suspected terrorists before military commissions that do not offer all of the protections of courts-martial authorized by Congress. The appeals court said that a federal district court was wrong to issue an injunction against the commissions.

Mr. Hamdan, a native of Yemen, was arrested in Afghanistan in November 2001 and is being held in solitary confinement at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. He has acknowledged being Bin Laden's driver but denies any involvement in terrorism.

The three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit also rejected Hamdan's claim that he was covered by Geneva Convention's protections for prisoners of war, which it said were not enforceable in U.S. courts. The panel also ruled that Congress gave Mr. Bush the power to create military commissions when it voted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force" against groups and individuals involved in acts of terrorism.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., then a judge on the D.C, Circuit, was a member of the panel that rejected Hamdan's claims. Yesterday the court said the chief justice did not participate in the decision to take the case, and he is not expected to be on the bench when it is argued.

U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement had argued that even if Hamdan were convicted by a military commission, "many of the issues that petitioner presses now may never arise in his case" -- such as Hamdan's complaint that commission would rules would allow him to be kept out of the courtroom during the discussions of classified information.

But in pleading with the court to take the case, Hamdan's lawyers cited the court's holding in the 2004 case of Rasul v. Bush that foreign detainees at Guantanamo are entitled to some due process and as well as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's observation in a related case, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president."

Michael Dorf, a professor of law at Columbia University who has written extensively about the Hamdan case, said the court had no choice but to grant review.

"The court had to take this one," Mr. Dorf said. "One of the central features of [the Hamdi and Rasul cases] is how little they decided. Justice O'Connor said the president doesn't have a blank check, but we want to know exactly what the check is."

The earliest the court would hear arguments in the Hamdan case would be Feb. 21, 2006. By that time, the Senate is expected to have voted on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr, raising the possibility that he, and not Justice O'Connor, will be on the bench when Hamdan's case is argued.

In other action yesterday, the justices:

Reacted skeptically to a claim by the Bush administration that the U.S. Postal Service is immune to lawsuits when mail carriers deliver packages in a way that creates a hazard for homeowners.

Agreed to allow the Bush administration to take part in oral arguments on Nov. 30 in two abortion cases. One deals with a challenge to a New Hampshire parental-notification law on the grounds that it lacks an exception for the health of the pregnant teenager. The other, arising from a racketeering lawsuit against Operation Rescue, poses the question of whether some blockades at abortion clinics violate the Hobbs Act, a federal extortion statute.

Refused to hear an appeal by Cincinnati of a finding by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that an employee who is demoted for not conforming to a "sex stereotype" can sue under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bans sex discrimination in employment. The case involves a transsexual police officer who was told he failed a probationary period because of a lack of "command presence."