WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday ruled that the Bush administration can transfer Jose Padilla, a Brooklyn-born convert to Islam held for three and a half years as an "enemy combatant," from a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., to a civilian detention facility in Florida.

Jose Padilla

Significantly, however, the justices said in their unsigned order that they were still considering whether to hear Mr. Padilla's appeal of a lower court decision that upheld, in sweeping terms, the government's authority to keep citizens it designates enemy combatants in open-ended military confinement.

Yesterday's order is the latest in a dizzying series of legal developments surrounding Mr. Padilla, who was originally detained in 2002 on the suspicion that he was part of an al-Qaida plot to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States. The dirty bomb charge is not part of the Florida case.

In 2004, the Supreme Court declined to rule in his challenge to the constitutionality of his confinmement because he had filed his petition in the wrong federal district court. He refiled it in South Carolina and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond ruled that President Bush properly had classified him as an enemy combatant.

But after indicting Mr. Padilla on terrorism charges unrelated to the "dirty bomb," the Justice Department took the unusual step of asking the 4th Circuit to vacate its decision against Padilla on the enemy-combatant issue.

The 4th Circuit then refused to transfer Mr. Padilla or vacate its earlier order, and issued an opinion suggesting that the Bush administration was trying to manipulate the judicial system to keep the courts from ruling on Mr. Padilla's original appeal.

At this point, Mr. Padilla's lawyers told the Supreme Court that they wanted Mr. Padilla to remain in military custody until the justices decided whether to hear his appeal of his enemy-combatant classification.

Calling the 4th Circuit's refusal to transfer Mr. Padilla an "unwarranted attack" on presidential authority, U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement asked the Supreme Court to override the ruling

Yesterday the Supreme Court granted that request, but the justices noted that Mr. Padilla's appeal of his detention as an enemy combatant was still before the court and would be acted on "in due course."

Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University and a former Supreme Court law clerk, said that the fact that the court granted the administration's request on the transfer might make Mr. Padilla's lawyers "slightly less optimistic" about winning a hearing on the enemy-combatant issue. "But it certainly doesn't foreclose that possibility," he said.