The Supreme Court meets to consider Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship, which were blocked by lower courts

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will meet in special session Friday to discuss a high-profile case on its docket — President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.

The justices could say Monday whether they will hear Trump’s appeal of lower court rulings that uniformly struck down citizenship restrictions. It has not entered into force anywhere in the United States.

Read more: Trump is asking the Supreme Court to uphold the birthright citizenship restrictions he wants to impose

If the court intervenes now, the case will be argued in the spring, with a final ruling expected by early summer.

The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed on the first day of his second term in the White House, is part of his administration’s broader campaign against immigration. Other measures include increased immigration enforcement in many cities and the first peacetime invocation of the 18th century Enemy Alien Act.

The administration faces several court challenges, and the Supreme Court has sent mixed signals in its emergency orders. Judges effectively halted the use of the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without court hearings, while allowing sweeping immigration stops to resume in the Los Angeles area after a lower court blocked the practice of stopping people based solely on race, language, occupation or location.

The justices are also considering the administration’s emergency appeal to allow National Guard troops to be deployed to the Chicago area for immigration enforcement actions. A lower court has blocked this publication indefinitely.

Birthright citizenship is Trump’s first immigration policy to reach the court for a final ruling. Trump’s order would upend more than 125 years of understanding that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to every person born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying power.

In a series of decisions, lower courts struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or potentially so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.

Read more: Judge blocks Trump’s birthright citizenship order in third ruling since Supreme Court decision

While the Supreme Court has restricted the use of nationwide injunctions, it has not ruled out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including class action lawsuits and those brought by states. The judges at the time did not decide whether the basic citizenship system was constitutional.

But every lower court that heard the case concluded that Trump’s order violated or likely violated the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.

The administration is appealing two cases.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco ruled in July that a group of states that sued over the matter needed a nationwide injunction to prevent problems that might result from birthright citizenship in some states but not others.

Read more: Supreme Court allows Trump to ban transgender Americans from choosing gender markers on passports

Also in July, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked a citizenship order in a class action lawsuit involving all children who might be affected.

The ACLU, which is leading the legal team in the New Hampshire case, urged the court to deny the appeal because the administration’s “arguments are so weak,” said Cody Wovesi, an ACLU attorney. “But if the court decides to hear the case, we are ready to take on Trump and win.”

Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally, under long-standing rules. This right was enshrined shortly after the Civil War in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The administration asserted that children of non-citizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are therefore not entitled to citizenship.

The Attorney General, Dr. John Sawyer in urging the Supreme Court to review the order: “The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of paramount importance to the President and his administration in a way that undermines the security of our borders.” He added, “These decisions grant, without legal justification, the privilege of American citizenship to hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”