The Supreme Court turned down an opportunity to overturn its precedent permitting buffer zones around abortion clinics over the objections of two of the court’s leading conservatives.

In two orders issued Monday, the court declined to take up challenges to ordinances in Carbondale, Ill., and Englewood, N.J., that ban anti-abortion activists from approaching someone entering an abortion clinic, sometimes dubbed "sidewalk counseling."

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito both indicated they would’ve taken up the case, but it requires four justices’ votes to do so.

Lower courts upheld both cities’ ordinances under the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Hill v. Colorado, which found a similar Colorado law did not violate the First Amendment.

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