U.S. Department of Justice lawyers might get involved in a lawsuit pitting abortion rights advocates against the Alabama attorney general over statements that people who help women travel out of state for abortions can face prosecution.

The Department of Justice filed its notice of potential participation last week and will weigh in Thursday with a filing if its attorneys choose to get involved.

The Yellowhammer Fund and a group of women’s health providers filed the lawsuit this summer after Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said he was looking at ways the state’s anti-abortion law could apply to people who help fund or facilitate out-of-state travel for abortions. The organizations said Marshall’s statements infringed on their right to speak freely about abortion and the rights of women to travel. They filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Montgomery.

The attorney general’s office responded to the lawsuit by asserting the state does have a right to prosecute people for conspiracy if they make a plan in Alabama to obtain an abortion, which is illegal under state law. Attorneys for the Yellowhammer Fund said it is not conspiracy if the abortion happened in a state where it is legal.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that states could make their own laws on abortion, striking down Roe v. Wade. The decision created a patchwork of abortion laws across the country. Alabama immediately outlawed abortion except in cases where the mother’s life is at risk. Alabama’s Human Life Protection Act made it illegal to perform an abortion, which is punishable by up to 99 years in prison.

Abortion is now illegal in much of the South. However, the procedure is still legal in much of the northern and western parts of the country.

The U.S. Department of Justice has gotten involved in other states’ abortion restrictions. Last year, attorneys for the agency challenged Idaho’s abortion ban on the grounds that the medical exemptions were too narrow and could lead to women being denied emergency medical care. A federal appeals court has temporarily stopped Idaho from fully enforcing its abortion ban while it hears the case.

Marshall filed a motion to dismiss the case in August. A hearing on that motion was postponed from Oct. 31 and has not been rescheduled.