The Supreme Court will not let Americans challenge the expansion of a surveillance law used to monitor conversations of foreign spies and terrorist suspects.

The high court on Tuesday agreed with a government request to throw out a lawsuit from a group of American lawyers, journalists and organizations challenging the 2008 expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The organizations said Americans who think they are getting caught up in the government monitoring should be allowed to sue to stop the law's expansion.

A federal judge threw out their lawsuit, but the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it. The Supreme Court overturned that ruling on a 5-4 vote.

The court was not considering the expansion's constitutionality, only whether lawyers can file a lawsuit to challenge it in federal court.