The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party organization in the southern German state of Bavaria may be placed under surveillance as a suspected extremist group, a court in Munich ruled on Monday.

The decision, which rejected a lawsuit brought by the Bavarian AfD, clears the way for the use of undercover agents and intercepted communications to monitor the group.

Two lower courts had already made similar rulings.

At the beginning of the hearing, the AfD’s Bavarian state chairman Stephan Protschka said that he did not expect the complaint to be successful and announced that the party would continue with further appeals.

AfD party organizations in a number of German states are under similar surveillance as suspected or known far-right extremists, as are some groups affiliated with the party at the national level, including the AfD’s youth wing.

The Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a state-level intelligence agency that monitors potential threats to Germany’s democratic values and institutions, announced in 2022 that it would begin monitoring the state-level AfD party.

The intelligence agency vowed in the announcement to make public reports about its findings, but the agency said it has refrained from deploying undercover agents or wiretaps until a final judicial ruling is issued on the matter.

The court ruled that thousands of pages of evidence compiled by the agency from publicly accessible sources – including chat transcripts and speech excerpts – prove the AfD’s anti-constitutional orientation and justify observation.

The spectrum ranges from anti-foreigner and anti-Muslim statements to anti-democratic statements by AfD members and party officials, the court said on Monday.