Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday said that it will hear oral arguments next month over whether the Trump administration can partially enforce an executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship while proceedings in a challenge to the directive move forward.

The court said in an unsigned order that arguments on the Justice Department’s request for emergency relief will take place during a special sitting on May 15. The administration has asked the Supreme Court to limit the scope of three separate injunctions that blocked implementation of President Trump’s order nationwide. 

If the high court decides to grant the Justice Department’s request, it would prevent the administration from enforcing Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship order only against the plaintiffs in the ongoing cases: seven individuals, specific members of immigrants’ rights groups and residents of 22 states.

The dispute over the president’s attempt to unwind birthright citizenship is the latest in which the Supreme Court has been asked to intervene, with more requests expected. More than 100 cases that seek to knock down Mr. Trump’s second-term policies have been filed since he returned to the White House in late January, and several have already made their way to the high court.

The president’s executive order on birthright citizenship was one of the first that he signed on his first day back in office and is among several directives that seek to target migrants who are in the U.S. unlawfully. The Trump administration’s immigration policies have led to high-profile clashes with the courts — namely Mr. Trump’s use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang and the administration’s mistaken removal of a Maryland man in the U.S. unlawfully to El Salvador.

While the 14th Amendment has for more than a century been understood to guarantee citizenship to all people born in the U.S., Mr. Trump’s order denied birthright citizenship to children born to a mother who is unlawfully present in the U.S. or who is lawfully present on a temporary basis; or whose father is neither a citizen nor lawful permanent resident.

The president’s order directed federal agencies to stop issuing documents recognizing U.S. citizenship to children born after Feb. 19.

More than half-dozen lawsuits challenging the measure were filed in courts throughout the country before it took effect, and three federal district courts in Washington, Maryland and Massachusetts each blocked the government from implementing the birthright citizenship order.

Federal appeals courts in San Francisco, Boston and Richmond, Virginia, then refused requests by the Trump administration to partly block the lower court orders.

The Justice Department filed emergency appeals of the three decisions with the Supreme Court in mid-March and asked it to limit enforcement of the birthright citizenship order to 28 states and individuals who are not involved in the ongoing cases. Then-acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris said that a minimum, the Supreme Court should allow agencies to develop and issue public guidance regarding implementation of Mr. Trump’s executive order while proceedings continue.

Like other requests made to the Supreme Court, Harris took aim at the breadth of the injunctions issued by the district courts, which are nationwide in scope and cover states and individuals who are not involved in the litigation before them.

The president and his allies have attacked judges for issuing nationwide injunctions in the slew of legal challenges to Mr. Trump’s policies, and even called for some to be impeached.

“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” Harris wrote. “Courts have graduated from universal preliminary injunctions to universal temporary restraining orders, from universal equitable relief to universal monetary remedies, and from governing the whole nation to governing the whole world.”

She argued that nationwide, or universal, injunctions prevent the executive branch from carrying out its work and impede Mr. Trump’s ability to address what he says is a “crisis” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The district courts’ universal injunctions threaten to perpetuate those problems by holding out a nationwide incentive for illegal immigration: the prospect of American citizenship for the unlawful migrants’ children and of derivative immigration benefits for the migrants themselves,” Harris wrote.

But the challengers urged the Supreme Court to leave the district court orders untouched.

In a filing with the Supreme Court, officials from 18 states, the District of Columbia and San Francisco called the Trump administration’s request “remarkable,” as it would allow the government to strip hundreds of thousands of American-born children of their citizenship while the legal challenges move forward and render them “deportable on birth and at risk of statelessness. 

The states argued that the Justice Department is seeking to violate binding Supreme Court precedent that recognized that birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

Two immigrants’ rights groups, CASA Inc and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, refuted the suggestion by the government that it needs emergency relief.

“The Executive Branch has been complying with the settled interpretation of the Citizenship Clause for 125 years, and the government has demonstrated no urgent need to change now,”  they wrote in a filing.

The groups also noted that with more than 800,000 members across all 50 states, “nationwide consistency” is important in the context of U.S. citizenship.

“Whether a child is a citizen of our nation should not depend on the state where she is born or the associations her parents have joined,” lawyers for the groups said.