The US Supreme Court will allow a Texas law banning most abortions to remain in effect while the Court waits to take up a legal challenge to it next month.

In a novel legal mechanism, the ‘heartbeat law’ allows private citizens to sue abortion providers who perform the procedure after a foetal heartbeat can be detected, which usually occurs about six weeks into a pregnancy.

On Friday, the justices said they will decide in November whether the Biden administration has the right to sue Texas over the law. It is very unusual for the court to review a law so quickly.

The case will focus not on the abortion ban itself but on how the law was crafted and whether it can be legally challenged.

The administration argued in a brief filed earlier on Friday that if the law remains in effect “no decision of this Court is safe. States need not comply with, or even challenge, precedents with which they disagree. They may simply outlaw the exercise of whatever rights they disfavor.”