The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed abortion pills to remain accessible via mail while a lower federal court considers a case that looks to restrict access to the drugs.

The Supreme Court did not explain its reasoning or disclose how the justices voted, but stated that the status quo on the abortion pills’ accessibility must remain until the case is done. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, two of the most conservative court members, dissented.

Thomas explicitly said the abortion pill mifepristone should not be available through the mail because it violates the Comstock Act, a pair of 19th-century federal laws that prohibit the shipment of “every article or thing designed, adapted or intended for producing abortion.”

“It is a criminal offense to ship mifepristone for use in abortions,” Thomas wrote, quoting the Comstock Act’s language. He then said that Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, two abortion pill manufacturers, were “criminal enterprises.”

Alito did not bring up the Comstock Act, but he did say the decision to allow mifepristone to be accessed via telemedicine “is the perpetration of a scheme to undermine” the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, the landmark 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to ban abortion.

Alito said that efforts by Louisiana – the state that originated the case – “have been thwarted by certain medical providers, private organizations, and States that abhor laws like Louisiana’s and seek to undermine their enforcement.”

GenBioPro, one of two companies that make mifepristone, heralded the high court’s decision to leave the abortion pill available through the mail.

“With today’s Supreme Court decision, Americans’ access to mifepristone remains unchanged for now,” GenBioPro CEO Evan Masingill said in a statement. “GenBioPro is continuing to serve its customers and is committed to providing our evidence-based, essential medication to all who need it. GenBioPro will continue to defend access to mifepristone in this case as it proceeds in the Fifth Circuit.”

Louisiana sued the Food and Drug Administration last year over 2023 guidance that allowed the abortion pill mifepristone to be available via telemedicine visits and the mail. State officials argued that the FDA guidance interfered with Louisiana’s multiple abortion bans and violated the Comstock Act.

GenBioPro and Danco Laboratories intervened in the lawsuit to defend mifepristone’s availability through the mail.

A panel of judges from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Louisiana earlier this month. The FDA’s guidance, the judges wrote, “creates an effective way for an out-of-state prescriber to place the drug in the hands of Louisianans in defiance of Louisiana law.”

Medication abortion accounts for 65% of abortions conducted in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. The organization also found that patients in states where abortion is banned are increasingly able to access abortion pills via telehealth, effectively circumventing state laws prohibiting abortion. Mifepristone is considered safe and effective by leading medical organizations.

The 5th Circuit panel found that Louisiana “has strongly shown a likelihood of winning” its case against the FDA and ruled that mifepristone could only be accessed in person.

“Every abortion facilitated by FDA’s action cancels Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is [a] human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person,’” the judges wrote.

The Supreme Court temporarily restored mail access to mifepristone earlier this month, and Thursday’s decision means the status quo will remain in effect as the case continues.

The decision comes about two years after the high court dismissed a case that sought to restrict access to abortion pills. At the time, the court determined that the anti-abortion groups that brought the lawsuit lacked standing.