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The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to take action on Tuesday that would allow it to prevent billions of dollars in foreign aid spending that Congress approved.

The appeal, which was filed by the administration’s lawyers late Tuesday evening, once again places a legal fight over U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funding before the Supreme Court. Tuesday’s filing comes just six months after the high court last heard the matter.

The nearly $12 billion in funding at issue is in aid intended for USAID and must be obligated before the fiscal year ends on September 30. President Donald Trump quickly moved to take action when he returned to the White House in January, signing an order on his first day back in the office to suspend nearly all foreign aid payments.

The order was the latest in a series of measures Trump has taken to dramatically scale back federal foreign assistance, including orders to zero out State Department and USAID budgets for 2021 and target cuts to USAID funding as part of fiscal year 2020 budget cuts. At the time, the president described the move as part of a wider effort to clean up what he described as “waste, fraud, and abuse” in foreign spending.

His order was immediately challenged in court, and in February, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali of the District of Columbia blocked the administration’s effort. Ali said the White House must continue to release money already approved by Congress. Ali’s order required the Trump administration to resume payments on billions of dollars in USAID grants.

The Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The appeals court heard the case earlier this month, ultimately voting 2-1 to vacate Ali’s injunction. Judge Karen L. Henderson, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, authored the majority opinion.

In her opinion, Henderson said the plaintiffs, a collection of foreign aid groups seeking to restore grant payments, lack standing to sue the administration. Henderson said the plaintiffs lacked a cause of action under the doctrine of impoundment. The decision was a major victory for the Trump administration.

But because the court has not yet issued a formal mandate to the lower court, the administration has been left in a tight spot. Ali’s order and the payment schedule he outlined in it remain technically in effect. As a result, the Trump administration is now in a race against the clock in an effort to avoid being forced to pay out the full $12 billion before the fiscal year ends at the end of September.

The case, Sauer v. Hicks, has been fast-moving and largely technical so far. In the emergency filing with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer noted that the Trump administration faces a September 30 deadline to obligate the nearly $12 billion in USAID funds at issue.

“Unless this Court acts, the Government will have to rapidly obligate some $12 billion in foreign-aid funds before the September 30 fiscal year deadline,” Sauer said.

Sauer noted that the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches is “delicate” and argued that the case should not be settled by the judiciary. “Congress did not upset that delicate interbranch balance by allowing for unlimited, unconstrained private suits,” he wrote.

Sauer and the administration further argued that the funding dispute should not be taken up by the courts and 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.”

The plaintiffs, a group of foreign aid organizations that point to U.S. statutes like the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), argue otherwise. The ICA, a law passed in the 1970s to curb executive overreach in federal spending, was part of the appropriations process, and the plaintiffs say it is the key legal hurdle facing the administration.

The foreign aid groups also point to the Administrative Procedure Act as one of the main statutory grounds for their claims.

In a 5-4 decision earlier this year, the Supreme Court already weighed in on a nearly identical legal dispute and ruled in favor of the administration.

In its current order, a panel of the D.C. Circuit said the federal government must continue to disburse funds to keep in compliance with orders Congress passed through the ICA.

The Supreme Court is now being asked to once again take action in the case, but this time the ruling is needed in a much shorter period. The stakes are also high for both sides: if the plaintiffs lose, foreign aid organizations around the world that rely on USAID funds may be forced to shutter projects or scale them back. If the Trump administration prevails, foreign aid groups may have a much harder time in the future pushing back against presidential efforts to cut or delay funding already approved by Congress.