WASHINGTON — The federal courts will resolve the question of whether mutual funds are charging too much in fees, the Supreme Court says.

The court today ordered a lower court to reconsider a lawsuit that asks the courts to rein in what some investors are calling "excessive" fees on mutual funds, a popular investment vehicle for millions of Americans.

The high court said the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago used the wrong standard when it threw out a lawsuit brought by investors against a mutual fund company for charging excessive fees.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court, said the appeals court should have made its decision using the widely used standard set by the courts in 1982 in the case Gartenberg v. Merrill Lynch Asset Management.

To face liability under Gartenberg, "an investment adviser must charge a fee that is so disproportionately large that it bears no reasonable relationship to the services rendered and could not have been the product of arm's length bargaining," Alito said.

The court sent the case back down for the courts to apply Gartenberg.

However, that does not bode well for the plaintiffs, because the federal judge who heard the case threw it out using the Gartenberg standard.

Mutual funds have become a popular way for Americans to invest, with more than $10 trillion in assets placed in mutual fund investment vehicles such as 529 college education plans or 401(k) retirements plans. The more money the adviser charges in fees, the less money goes into the mutual fund for investors.