A city program that provides health care to the people who are uninsured and its partly being funded by businesses was given the green light on Wednesday at least until a lawsuit challenging the program is resolved, a federal appeals court ruled.

The unanimous decision, from a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, gives permission to the city to require businesses with more than 20 employees to pay a fee to help cover employees’ health care costs. The businesses are required to pay a minimum health care contribution of $1.17 to $1.76 an hour for each employee. The fees can go toward a variety of health-care option, including employer-provided insurance, health savings accounts, direct payment of medical bills, or payment in a new city program called Healthy San Francisco.

The city officials believe that 20,000 people without insurance will be helped this way.

“There may be better ways to provide health care than to require private employers to foot the bill,” Judge William Fletcher wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel. However, Fletcher said it was not the court’s job to “evaluate the wisdom” of the plan, only its legality.

The “ruling is an important victory for uninsured San Franciscans,” said Mayor Gavin Newsom, according to the Associated Press. He added that nearly 8,000 people have signed up so far and that the city hopes to offer access to about 40,000 more uninsured residents this year.

The law, the first-in-the-nation, which passed the city’s Board of Superiors in 2006, had been challenged by a local organization of restaurants, which argued that it would violate a 1974 federal statute that prohibits conflicting local, state and federal benefit plans.

“It’s expensive, it’s unsustainable and there’s better ways to do it,” said Daniel Scherotter, the incoming president of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which filed the suit challenging the law.

Scherotter, who awns an Italian restaurant in the city estimates that he already spends $60,000 a year on health insurance, but the new plan could cost him twice that.

“Everybody seems to know that restaurants are really risky business, but somehow, they’re saying, ‘Oh, they’re rolling in it, they can pay for it,’ ” he said.

In late December by Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court sustained this opinion and suspended the low, which was due to take effect on January 1.

A lawyer for the restaurant owners did not return a telephone call.