Hillary Rodham Clinton cannot be forced to testify in a decade-old lawsuit over the White House's handling of FBI background files, a federal judge said, sparing the presidential hopeful an unwelcome campaign distraction.

The conservative group Judicial Watch has been seeking Clinton's deposition since 1996. The lawsuit is over the Clinton White House's acquisition of hundreds of FBI files on Republican appointees in the White House during previous administrations.

In a brief order filed Monday night, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth denied the request to put Clinton under oath. He said he would issue an opinion soon explaining his decision.

Had Clinton been forced to testify, it would have rekindled a controversy in the midst of her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. She faces tough odds to overtake rival Barack Obama in the delegate race but has vowed to keep running.

The FBI file controversy erupted in 1996 when the Clinton administration, which was under investigation for the firing of White House travel office employees, acknowledged it sought and received the FBI files of hundreds of prominent Republicans.

The Clinton administration said the files were requested because President George H.W. Bush, like other presidents, had taken all the White House personnel files with him upon leaving office, even those of permanent White House employees. Like other administrations, the Clinton White House asked for the FBI background checks on everyone working in the complex to reconstitute the personnel files, but the staff members who handled the request failed to purge the names of obvious Republican political appointees of past administrations from the lists sent to the FBI, the Clinton White House said.

But Republicans accused the Clinton administration of misusing the FBI to get information on political enemies. An Independent Counsel report in 2000 found no evidence of wrongdoing by White House aides or Clinton.

The Judicial Watch lawsuit persisted, however, and lawyers have continued trying to put Clinton under oath. Clinton's lawyer had no comment Wednesday and a campaign spokesman did not immediately return a message seeking comment,

Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch's president, said the case would continue. He noted that Lamberth left the door open for attorneys to revisit the question of Clinton's deposition.

"Hillary is not out of the woods yet and the issue may come up again in litigation," Fitton said. "If I were the defendant, I would not take much solace in this ruling."

Lamberth, who was appointed by President Reagan, presided over several lawsuits stemming from controversy in the Clinton White House. More recently, he made headlines for rejecting an effort by another conservative group to run advertisements criticizing Clinton in key election states this primary season.