Assistant Interior Secretary Lyle Laverty has said the department needed until June 30 to complete a legal and policy review of the proposed listing.
Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, the lead author of the petition submitted in 2005, called the judge's order a huge victory, despite not knowing whether polar bears ultimately will be listed.
"It means that whatever political interference going on right now is going to be short-circuited," she said.
"The politicians and the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., are going to have to stop interfering with the decision and get it out the door."
The law requires a decision based on science, she said, and science shows the Arctic is thawing.
"The science is perfectly clear. There's no dispute. The polar bear is an endangered species," she said.
Sea Ice Shrinking
In response to the petition filed in 2005, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed in December 2006 that polar bears be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of the loss of their primary habitat, Arctic sea ice.
Summer sea ice shrank last year to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles in September, nearly 40 percent less ice than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000.
Some climate models have predicted the Arctic will be free of summer sea ice by 2030.
A U.S. Geological Survey study generated in response to the listing petition predicted polar bears in Alaska could be wiped out by 2050.
A decision on the proposed listing was due January 9, but Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall said in January that a delay was needed to make sure it came in a form easily understood.
He promised a decision within a month, but that deadline also passed, and the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Greenpeace sued in March.
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