The coronavirus pandemic has become part of one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most important cases this term, potentially complicating its outcome. Whether and how the justices will be influenced by the crisis in their final deliberations is hard to gauge.

Lawyers for a group of “Dreamers,” recipients of the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program, informed the justices in a letter Friday that 27,000 recipients are health care workers and nearly 200 are medical students, residents and physicians, many now fighting the virus across the nation.