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In an emergency appeal filed late Tuesday night, Trump administration lawyers urged the Supreme Court to permit the White House to block billions of dollars in foreign aid spending that Congress had already authorized. The filing sends the latest legal fight over U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funding back to the high court for the second time in six months.

The nearly $12 billion in aid is a sliver of a massive package Congress approved for USAID back in December. The funds are “required to be obligated” before the end of the fiscal year, which is September 30. President Donald Trump moved quickly after returning to the White House in January, signing an executive order on his first day back in office that ordered the federal government to stop nearly all foreign aid payments. The president cast the move as a step toward his larger effort to eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse” in foreign spending.

That order was challenged in court, and in February, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington, D.C., issued a ruling that effectively blocked the administration’s efforts. Judge Ali said that the White House was required to continue releasing money for specific projects Congress had previously approved. His ruling required the Trump administration to resume payment on billions of dollars of USAID grants.

Trump officials didn’t take kindly to Judge Ali’s ruling. The case was taken up again by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit earlier this month, with the three-judge panel ruling 2-1 to vacate Judge Ali’s injunction. In a ruling written by Judge Karen L. Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee, the plaintiffs in the case — foreign aid groups that were seeking to have their grant payments reinstated — did not have adequate legal standing to sue the administration. Henderson wrote that the groups lacked the “cause of action” needed to sue based on what is known as the doctrine of impoundment.

The decision from the appeals court was a big win for Trump and his team, but the court has not yet issued a formal mandate to put its ruling into effect. That has allowed Judge Ali’s original order, and the payment schedule it stipulated, to technically remain in place. Because of that, the administration is now racing the clock to avoid a ruling that could force it to disburse the full $12 billion before the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

Emergency Appeal and Wider Legal Arguments

On Tuesday, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the top government lawyer who filed the emergency request with the Supreme Court, made a dramatic claim in the appeal. “Unless this Court acts,” he argued, “the government must — before the end of the fiscal year on September 30, 2020 — rapidly obligate some $12 billion in foreign-aid funds.” The claim highlights the urgency of the request; with just a few weeks left in the fiscal year, the administration’s lawyers are asking the Supreme Court to intervene quickly and forcefully in the dispute.

The central legal argument made by Sauer in his appeal is that the question of whether the White House can block the aid should not be decided by federal courts in the first place. “Congress did not upset the delicate interbranch balance by allowing for unlimited, unconstrained private suits,” Sauer wrote in the filing, adding that “any lingering dispute about the proper disposition of funds that the President seeks to rescind shortly before they expire should be left to the political branches, not effectively prejudged by the district court.”

Plaintiffs in the case — a group of foreign aid organizations whose work is funded by USAID — have taken an opposing position. The heart of their argument is that the president can’t unilaterally rescind money that Congress has already appropriated. The plaintiffs are relying on a law passed in the 1970s known as the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), along with the Administrative Procedure Act. The two laws are the key statutory basis for the plaintiffs’ claims in the case.

The Supreme Court has already considered a similar dispute and issued a 5-4 ruling in favor of Trump. It’s not clear what impact, if any, the earlier ruling will have on this case. As of Tuesday evening, the clock is ticking, the fiscal year is nearly over, and billions of dollars are at stake. The Supreme Court will now have to decide whether to intervene in the fight.