For nearly nine years, judges in Washington have skirted around a conflict between Congress and the White House that touches a divisive foreign policy issue: the status of Jerusalem.

Ari and Naomi Zivotofsky, the American parents of a boy who was born in Jerusalem in 2002, sued the U.S. State Department over its refusal to allow “Israel” as the place of birth on the child’s passport, kicking off a case that grabbed the attention of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.