, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned that the ecological damage was significant . `` This likely harm can not be lightly dismissed , '' she said , `` even in the face of an alleged risk to the effectiveness of the Navy 's 14 training exercises . '' Justices David Souter , Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens also questioned the Navy 's arguments . The exercises have continued while the case was under appeal . Environmentalists had sued the Pentagon over the practice , and a federal judge ordered major changes to the Navy 's annual offshore training exercises in March . President Bush had issued an emergency waiver to allow the exercises to go on without the filing of an environmental impact study , but the lower court ruling blocked the use of sonar . That federal judge , in ruling against the government last March , said it was `` constitutionally suspect '' for Bush to issue the national security exemption to allow skipping the impact study . Military officials argued that the restrictions could hamper readiness in time of war , because new sonar technology is needed to detect increasingly sophisticated enemy submarines . `` This
WASHINGTON -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday lifted sanctions placed on the Navy over its underwater sonar testing , a setback for environmental groups that claimed the warfare technology was harming whales and other marine mammals . An endangered blue whale surfaces off the coast of Southern California in July . At issue in the 5-4 ruling was whether the Navy 's need to conduct exercises to protect the country from enemy submarines outweighed concerns raised by environmental groups . The case focused on whether the president had the power to issue executive waivers allowing such tests and whether federal judges can issue preliminary injunctions blocking them . The high court ultimately sided with claims of national security over environmental concerns . Those environmental interests , said Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority , `` are plainly outweighed by the Navy 's need to conduct realistic training exercises to ensure that it is able to neutralize the threat posed by enemy submarines . '' Roberts said a lower federal court `` abused its discretion '' by imposing a 2,200-yard perimeter for testing and ordering a shutdown of sonar use during surfacing exercises . But in dissent