A Massachusetts federal judge extended a pause on the Trump administration’s efforts to cap the indirect costs paid to grant recipients from the National Institutes of Health. The cap could save upward of $4 billion per year.

The pause was scheduled to expire on Monday but will now continue until U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley can make a final decision. The cap is another effort from the federal government to cut costs at the beginning of the new administration.

Indirect costs include mainly include supplementary items for researchers and research intuitions. Office space and equipment, as well as financial, technology, legal, and compliance support, are considered indirect costs.

The difficulty that cutting indirect costs poses is that those expenses will have to be absorbed by whoever receives the grants. The concern is that research will have to be scaled back to accommodate the costs.

Indirect cost reimbursement usually ranges from 25% to 70%. The Trump administration is aiming to cut it to a flat 15% rate. The NIH said this cut would save $4 billion a year.

Several lawsuits were filed after the cuts were announced, resulting in its current contested status.

The plaintiffs have argued the cap will cause “irreparable harm” if implemented, while the Trump administration has countered that the additional funds could go to more grants.

Sens. Shelley Moore-Capito (R-WV) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have been critical of the cuts. Moore-Capito called the cuts “drastic” and said she’s concerned.

Collins had harsh words for the cuts as well. “I oppose the poorly conceived directive imposing an arbitrary cap on the indirect costs that are part of NIH grants and negotiated between the grant recipient and NIH,” she said in a statement, adding that she called Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before he was confirmed to express her concern.

She said in a statement that in their conversation, Kennedy committed to “re-examin[ing] this initiative that was implemented prior to his confirmation.”

Those affected by the proposed cap shared their confidence that the added pause indicates they have a strong case. “I was pretty optimistic going into it that the people bringing the suit had a strong case,” Jeremy Berg, former editor of Science and a previous director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, told STAT after the hearing. “Nothing I heard dissuaded me.”

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Kelley said she “has a lot of work to do” as she left the courtroom.

Her decision will have wide effects on medical research and could indicate how far the Trump administration can go to cut costs.