WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court decided yesterday that the White House's right to privacy trumped the public's right to know in the legal saga involving Vice President Dick Cheney and the energy task force he headed.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed a lawsuit that sought to force Cheney to turn over records of private meetings his office held in 2001 to shape the administration's energy policy.

The unanimous ruling was a major legal and political victory for the White House, solidifying the president's power to deliberate and seek advice behind closed doors without disclosing details. The court's eight judges supported the Bush administration's contention that forcing the executive branch to produce information about its internal policy deliberations is unnecessarily intrusive and violates the president's constitutional powers.

"The president must be free to seek confidential information from many sources, both inside the government and outside," Judge Raymond Randolph wrote for the court. Prompted by a 2004 ruling by the Supreme Court, the judges stressed the necessity of protecting the powers of the executive branch.

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, and the Sierra Club, a liberal environmental group, had sued under a 1972 open-government law, seeking minutes of task-force meetings and records showing who attended. They argued that members of large energy corporations and industry groups effectively became members of Cheney's energy task force and helped write the administration's energy policy.

Cheney's plan — the basis for energy legislation now before Congress — calls for more drilling, more nuclear-power plants and the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil companies.

But the judges said the groups failed to show that people other than federal officials were members of the energy task force under the court's definition. Randolph noted that White House officials had testified that industry members offered opinions only at advisory meetings and did not have a vote or veto in writing the administration's recommendations. Therefore, he wrote, Cheney had no duty to disclose details of internal government meetings.

"What this court decision does ... is to preserve the confidentiality of internal deliberation among the president and his advisers that the Constitution protects as essential to wise and informed decision making," said Steve Schmidt, a senior Cheney adviser.

During the Clinton administration, the same appeals court gave the 1972 open-government law a broader scope and said it applied to the health-policy task force led by first lady Hillary Clinton. Then, the appeals court said that outside participants who met within a White House advisory group were "de facto members" of the group, and therefore, the public had a right to know about the meetings.

Environmentalists and advocates of open government said yesterday's decision was a double blow.

"As a policy matter, we see the Bush administration has succeeded in its efforts to keep secret how industry crafted the administration's energy policy," said David Bookbinder, the Sierra Club's lead attorney on the case. "As a legal matter, it's a defeat for efforts to have open government and for the public to know how their elected officials are conducting business."

The case was one of the most politically charged suits against the government since President Bush took office. Some Democratic strategists said that they had hoped it would embarrass the administration and that the suit would produce revelations in 2004 that would hurt Bush's re-election chances.

The court decision is unusual for two reasons, according to law professors and lawyers involved in the case. First, it was unanimous, an atypical result for a court whose members hold a broad spectrum of views. Some experts say unanimity was the judges' way of signaling that their court should not be used to settle political scores.

The decision also hinges on accepting, without question, assertions by two senior administration officials who said industry members were not task-force members.

Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University constitutional- and environmental-law professor, said the court's ruling creates "an absurd standard" because it required the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch to prove their assertions but prohibited them from gathering records or information from the White House.

"It's impossible to establish that industry substantially participated in these meetings if you deny them basic discovery needed to show those facts," Turley said.

In 2002, a district-court judge allowed the plaintiffs to seek a limited number of energy task-force documents from Cheney's office as part of the discovery process. The government appealed, and the circuit court ruled that the White House could protect the materials from release — but only by citing executive privilege, a step it had not taken.

The government appealed to the Supreme Court, which last year sent the case back to the appeals court with directions that it consider "the weighty separation-of-powers objections" of the government and re-examine whether to order the complaint's dismissal.

"Bottom line: This is a significant win for those who believe the presidency needs more power and has lost power over the past 30 years," said American University's James Thurber, who is writing a book on presidential power.

Compiled from reports by The Washington Post, The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times.