Massachusetts’ highest court declined on Thursday a request by Boston University to block a judicial order requiring a state review of the controversial research laboratory that the university is building to study biological-warfare agents. However, the Supreme Judicial Court did not halt construction, The Boston Globe reported.

The university had appealed a 2006 ruling by a state-court judge requiring the university to perform the environmental-impact review and submit it to the state for approval. The review would replace the state’s original analysis of the facility, which the Supreme Judicial Court called “arbitrary and capricious” in its decision this week.

The original study did not consider worst-case scenarios for the accidental or intentional release of dangerous pathogens from the lab building, the Supreme Judicial Court said. The study analyzed the potential escape only of anthrax bacteria, which, while deadly, cannot be transmitted from person to person. But the lab could be used to study other lethal, transmissible microbes, like the Ebola virus and plague bacteria.

Just two weeks ago, the university suffered another blow when a panel of independent scientists convened by the National Academies made similar findings. Their report called a separate federal analysis of the lab’s health risks “not sound and credible.”

With construction now 70 percent complete, activists who oppose the laboratory as too risky for an urban neighborhood still hope to block operation within a subsection of the building of a highly secure, “Biosafety Level 4” lab. There, spacesuit-clad scientists would work with the most dangerous microbes. The state could block that laboratory while allowing less-dangerous research in other parts of the building — but such an outcome would nevertheless deal the university a stinging loss.

In a statement, the university said it would continue working on the new state-mandated review, adding, “We are confident that” it “will satisfy the court.” —Jeffrey Brainard