The U.S. Supreme Court docket on Friday agreed to hear a present by President Joe Biden’s administration to revive a federal law that makes it a prison offense to assist unlawful immigration after it used to be struck down by a decrease court docket as a violation of free speech rights.

The justices took up the administration’s appeal of a February ruling by the San Francisco-basically basically basically based 9th U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals invalidating the law for infringing on rights assured under the U.S. Structure’s First Amendment.

The 9th Circuit’s ruling threw out part of the conviction of a California man, Helaman Hansen, who had been prosecuted under the law.

The dispute is similar to one that the Supreme Court docket heard, but didn’t resolve, in 2020.

The federal executive accused Hansen of deceiving undocumented immigrants between 2012 and 2016 by promising them that they would well non-public U.S. citizenship via an “grownup adoption” program operated by his Sacramento-basically basically basically based alternate, American citizens Helping The United States Chamber of Commerce.

The executive stated Hansen persuaded now not decrease than 471 participants to affix his program, charging them every up to $10,000 despite the fact that he “knew that the grownup adoptions that he touted would now not consequence in U.S. citizenship.”

Hansen used to be convicted in 2017 of violating provisions of the federal law that bars inducing or encouraging noncitizens “to near abet to, enter, or reside” in the united states illegally, as well to mail fraud and wire fraud and used to be sentenced to twenty years in penal advanced.

On appeal, the 9th Circuit in February ruled that the encouragement law is unconstitutional due to it is overly good and criminalizes even habitual speech that is safe by the First Amendment, comparable to telling undocumented immigrants, “I reduction you to reside in the united states,” or advising them about available in the market social services and products.

The 9th Circuit upheld Hansen’s diversified convictions and ordered that he be resentenced.

Biden’s administration instructed the Supreme Court docket to hear the case, faulting the appeals court docket for invalidating an “indispensable instrument for combating actions that exacerbate unlawful immigration.”

The case will possible be heard in the course of the court docket’s present timeframe, with a ruling due by June 2023.