WASHINGTON  Abdullah al-Kidd, born in Kansas and once a star running back at the University of Idaho, spent 16 days in federal detention in three states in 2003, sometimes naked and sometimes shackled hand and foot.

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether he may sue John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, for what Mr. Kidd contends was an unconstitutional use of a law meant to hold “material witnesses.” Mr. Kidd says the law was used as a pretext for detaining him because he was suspected of terrorist activities.

The material witness law is typically used to hold people who have information about crimes committed by others when there is reason to think they would not appear at trial to give testimony. Critics say the Bush administration radically reinterpreted the law after the Sept. 11 attacks, using it as a tool for preventive detention.

Laws allowing the preventive detention of terrorism suspects are common in Europe. The United States does not have such a law, but Mr. Kidd contends that a policy set by Mr. Ashcroft allowed federal prosecutors to use the material witness law to the same end.