The US Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to withhold 4 billion dollar in foreign aid that had been appropriated by Congress, in a preliminary test of President Trump’s efforts to wrest the power of the purse from lawmakers. In its brief order, the court’s conservative majority allowed the President to cut the funding in part because it said his flexibility to engage in foreign affairs outweighed the potential harm faced by aid recipients.

The justices cautioned that their decision, a temporary one while litigation continues, should not be read as a final determination on the merits. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. The three liberal justices dissented, saying the issue before the court was too consequential to have been dealt with on an emergency basis. In response to the Supreme Court order, lawyers for one of the challengers, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, said that the ruling allowed the administration to refuse to pay out billions it was required by law to spend.