It’s been a relatively quiet term at the Supreme Court since the justices reconvened last October. The court has some important cases on its docket this year, notably on tribal reservations in Oklahoma, a Double Jeopardy Clause exception, and partisan gerrymandering. But it lacked any cases on the major social issues that occasionally dominate its work. Then, last September, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its decision in June Medical Center v. Gee, upholding a Louisiana statute that would effectively force all but one of the state’s abortion clinics to close.

Abortion-rights groups argued that the decision came in direct defiance of the Supreme Court’s past abortion precedents, including a 2016 ruling by the high court that struck down a similar law in Texas. The Fifth Circuit’s ruling was set to take effect on Monday, but last week Justice Samuel Alito, who handles stay applications from the Fifth Circuit, temporarily blocked it from going into effect until Thursday, February 7. He told the parties that the delay was necessary so that all of the justices could review the filings and deliberate over what the Supreme Court’s response would be.

Opponents and supporters of abortion rights alike knew that a moment like this was coming ever since Anthony Kennedy’s retirement last summer. Some legal experts predicted after his announcement that abortion would be illegal in 20 states within twelve to 18 months. If the justices let the Fifth Circuit’s ruling go into effect on Thursday, that estimate may well prove true.

At issue in June Medical Center is a 2014 Louisiana state law known as Act 620. The statute is what abortion rights supporters call a “TRAP law,” which stands for “targeted regulation of abortion providers.” By relying on a state government’s power to set health and safety standards, state lawmakers can impose onerous regulatory burdens on clinics until they’re no longer able to stay open. This strategy allows lawmakers to limit a woman’s ability to obtain the procedure under the aegis of protecting women’s health and without banning abortion outright. After all, the constitutional right to obtain an abortion can’t be exercised if there’s nowhere to obtain it.

Act 620’s main provision required doctors who provide abortions to obtain admitting privileges at hospitals within a 30-mile radius of the clinic itself. In 2017, Judge John deGravelles blocked the law from taking effect because it would impose an undue burden on Louisiana women because many hospitals refused to grant admitting privileges or weren’t within range of a clinic. The judge noted that the law would leave open only a single clinic in New Orleans and force women elsewhere in the state to travel long distances to obtain the procedure. “In short, Act 620 would do little or nothing for women’s health, but rather would create impediments to abortion, with especially high barriers set before poor, rural, and disadvantaged women,” he wrote.