The court on Monday said it will leave in place a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that the law was unconstitutional because it prohibited political, religious and other messages in addition to commercial solicitations.

Virginia was the only state to ban noncommerical spam e-mail.

The decision also cements the reversal of the conviction of Jeremy Jaynes, who once was considered one of the world's most prolific spammers. Jaynes bombarded Internet users with millions of pieces of spam, all of it commercial.

In 2004, Jaynes became the first person in the U.S. to be convicted of a felony for sending unsolicited bulk e-mail. He was sentenced to nine years but is currently serving time in federal prison on an unrelated conviction for securities fraud.

The case is Virginia v. Jaynes, 08-765.

U.S. authorities say the men were part of a secret mission to help militants locked in the bloody civil war in their homeland by buying and smuggling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of surface-to-air missiles. According to court papers, the men also wanted guns — but not just any guns.

"We need AK-47s, but only if you have Russian-made or American-made," prosecutors allege one defendant said during a meeting with an undercover agent posing as a crooked arms dealer. "Not the Chinese."

The videotaped sting is central to an unusual case against four alleged agents of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or "Tamil Tigers" — a Sri Lankan rebel force the State Department calls a terrorist organization.