WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court yesterday declined for now to review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees may go to federal court to challenge their indefinite confinement. Some justices made clear they would be sympathetic to further requests from the detainees.

Some of the roughly 385 prisoners have been held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba for more than five years. None has yet had a hearing in a civilian court challenging his detention, even though two earlier Supreme Court rulings extended legal protection to them.

At issue is whether those at Guantanamo have a right to habeas corpus review, a tenet of the Constitution that protects people from unlawful imprisonment.

In February, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a key provision of a law the Bush administration pushed through Congress last year stripping federal courts of their ability to hear such challenges.

Three justices said they wanted to intervene immediately in the matter, and two other justices said they might vote to do so later. It takes four votes among the nine justices to accept a case.

“Despite the obvious importance” of the cases, it would be premature to intervene, Justices Stevens and Kennedy wrote.

If the detainees’ legal position is ultimately upheld, hearing their cases now might have avoided an additional year or more of imprisonment, wrote Justice Breyer, dissenting from the decision not to revisit the issue. He was joined by Justices Souter and Ginsburg. Justices Breyer and Souter said they would have heard the case on a fast track, as the detainees requested.