On Monday, July 28, the maternity wards in hospitals across the country may face a dilemma: if a woman who is not a citizen has a baby there that day or later, will the hospital consider the child to be a citizen, or not?  How will the staff fill out the birth certificate?

The 30-day clock before that situation arises started running today, under a Supreme Court decision on Friday that left unsettled whether “birthright citizenship” will still be a constitutional right for children born to immigrant parents – those who are here illegally or only temporarily.

Depending upon what happens over the next month, in federal courts and in the Trump Administration, it could be that newborns to those parents could face deportation right after they are born.  That, at least, is what three Justices who dissented on Friday said might happen.

Estimates are that more than 200,000 newborns could be affected over the next year.

How could that be?  After the Court’s 6-to-3 decision took away much of the power of lower federal courts to issue nationwide orders stopping the Trump Administration from carrying out its ban on citizenship at birth for non-citizens’ newborns, the Court said that the ruling would not take effect for 30 days.

Here is what is expected to unfold in that four-week span:

• The Administration will make its plan for carrying out the ban, including arrangements to deny citizenship for newborns affected by the ban who are born after the 30-day postponement ends. That includes figuring out what state governments can do about issuing birth certificates on those babies’ citizenship.
• Those government plans will be fashioned under the Trump ban, not under the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment, which states explicitly that all children born in the U.S. are citizens from the moment of their birth.
• Federal judges in at least three states – Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington States – will withdraw their earlier nationwide orders against enforcement of the ban and try to work out narrower restrictions.
• Those judges previously had signaled that the Trump ban is probably unconstitutional, and they apparently do not have to reconsider that. But the remedy they are now allowed to impose can apply only to those individuals who sued in those states to challenge the ban.
• That will likely mean that the ban won’t apply to those individuals, but will go into effect against a far greater number of non-citizens who have babies after July 28, those living elsewhere in the nation. The result may be a confusing patchwork of where the ban will be operating, and where not.

There is one significant uncertainty about how this scenario will occur.  The Court’s ruling restricting judges’ power only applies to individuals, not to several states that also sued Trump over the ban.  The Court did not say how, but it indicated that federal judges may be able to treat states differently.  States were also involved in the case on Friday, claiming that they are affected because they provide a variety of public benefits for migrants’ children who are citizens.

Another uncertainty is whether lawyers for immigrants’ rights groups will switch tactics and sue in what are called “class action” lawsuits.  Those are cases in which individuals ban together to represent the interests that they share with others, maybe across the whole nation.

In fact, the first such lawsuit involved a claimed nationwide class affected by the ban was filed in federal trial court in New Hampshire soon after the Court issued its decision.. The opening document in the Concord case claimed that the individuals who will represent the class will be able to meet all of the technical legal requirements for such a case.  The judge in that case will hold a video conference with lawyers on Monday to plan next steps.

The lawyers for that proposed “class” asked that the judge rule that the Trump ban violates the 14^th Amendment’s guarantee of “birthright citizenship” and also violates specific federal laws.  They asked for an order totally barring any enforcement, anywhere, of the Trump ban.

The Supreme Court did leave that alternative option open, although several of the Justices in the majority on Friday tried in separate opinions to discourage that approach.  Since they were not the only ones in the majority, it is not clear how lawyers pursuing these sweeping claims will react.  The New Hampshire filing suggests they are not likely to be deterred.

Since President Trump issued the birthright citizenship ban on non-citizens on January 20, as part of a nationwide sweep to deport those who are in the U.S. without legal documents, government agents have shown up even in hospitals in search of migrants.

The specter of an immediate deportation of a newborn infant denied citizenship was raised by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissenting opinion on Friday.  Her dissent, joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, expressed free of widespread harm to newborn babies and their parents as a direct result of the new decision.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was the author of the majority opinion, said the criticism of the ban by the dissenters was “premature because the birthright citizenship issue is not before us….We take no position on whether the dissent’s analysis is right.”

The 30-day postponement of enforcement of the ban was suggested by the Trump Administration; it said it needed the time in order to work out the details of how to enforce the presidential order.

It is possible that some judges, confronted with new or renewed challenges to the ban, will try to give themselves more time to decide how to react to the denial of broad enforcement power.  But it does appear that, if the Supreme Court ruling does go into effect on July 28, government agents will be able to start enforcement that day.

The majority’s reasoning in cutting back on judges’ authority in this controversy was based on its interpretation of a 1789 federal law governing federal courts’ authority, using that as a guide to what the old law still means today.  That is a clear example of the current conservative majority’s preferred method of deciding the “original meaning” of old laws and the Constitution itself, then applying the result to current controversy.

The Barrett opinion also traced the historic roots of judicial power in the U.S. back to legal principles in the courts of England in that same long-past period.

The Barrett opinion was supported in full by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas.  Three of those (Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas) wrote or joined separate opinions cautioning lawyers not to interpret the ruling as leaving judges free to fashion new checks on presidential powers.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote an opinion for himself, seeking to explain how the new ruling would work in actual operation, with lower court judges restrained in how they issue orders to the national government, thus leaving to the Supreme Court the final say in rulings that apply across the entire nation.

His description made the process sound more orderly that it may turn out to be.