The U.S. Supreme Court’s first oral argument of the term Monday highlighted the different approaches of “textualists” such as Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in a case that could affect the sentences of thousands of convicts.

In Pulsifer v. U.S., the high court is grappling with which classes of defendants are exempt from mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug crimes through the 2018 criminal justice reform law, the federal First Step Act.