A federal judge has allowed a five-year-old case on government surveillance to proceed—rejecting the government’s argument from December 2012 to invoke the state secrets privilege and dismiss the case. However, in the Monday ruling, the judge also allowed the government to dismiss some of the counts of alleged violations, citing the principle of sovereign immunity.

In the case known as Jewel v. NSA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has charged that a number of AT&T customers’ constitutional rights were violated under the domestic surveillance program authorized during the days of the Bush Administration. The EFF initially filed the case on behalf of Carolyn Jewel and other plaintiffs back in 2008, so it long predates the recent disclosures by former NSA employee Edward Snowden. Jewel, the lead plaintiff, is a romance novelist who lives in Petaluma, California, north of San Francisco.

Judge Jeffrey White, in his 26-page order, wrote:

Here, having reviewed the materials submitted for review and having considered the claims alleged and the record as a whole, the Court finds that Defendants have timely invoked the state secrets doctrine. Defendants contend that Plaintiffs' lawsuits should be dismissed as a result of the application of the privilege because the state secrets information is so central to the subject matter of the suit that permitting further proceedings would jeopardize national security. Given the multiple public disclosures of information regarding the surveillance program, the Court does not find that the very subject matter of the suits constitutes a state secret.

The EFF issued a statement with commentary from legal director, Cindy Cohn:

The court rightly found that the traditional legal system can determine the legality of the mass, dragnet surveillance of innocent Americans and rejected the government's invocation of the state secrets privilege to have the case dismissed. Over the last month, we came face-to-face with new details of mass, untargeted collection of phone and Internet records, substantially confirmed by the Director of National Intelligence,” she added. “[Monday's] decision sets the stage for finally getting a ruling that can stop the dragnet surveillance and restore Americans' constitutional rights.

The attorneys involved are set to meet for a status conference in late August 2013.