Even with a 6-3 conservative majority, the U.S. Supreme Court has its limits.

With two rulings on Thursday, the court added a note of moderation to what has been a rightward shift since the arrival of three Donald Trump appointees. The court rejected the latest Republican attack on the Affordable Care Act and gave religious-rights advocates only a narrow victory in a clash over Philadelphia’s foster-care program and same-sex parents.

Together, the rulings mean the court potentially will close out Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s first term with no watershed conservative victories. Although the court still has 15 remaining cases, including a clash over the Voting Rights Act, the term’s theme so far has been more incrementalism than revolution.

Whether that trend continues is another matter. The court under Chief Justice John Roberts has already scheduled showdowns over abortion and gun rights for the nine-month term that starts in October. The abortion case could gut the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

“What we saw today is the product of several justices – the chief justice among them – working to build consensus and avoid making big waves,” said Allison Orr Larsen, a professor and director of the Institute of the Bill of Rights Law at William & Mary Law School.

“This may be a short-lived strategy, though, given the hot-button cases already on the docket for next term.”

The Affordable Care Act was the biggest potential prize for conservatives looking for a legal trophy after Trump’s appointment of Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. States led by Texas contended a 2017 tax change, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress, was enough to unravel the entire law, also known as Obamacare.

The change eliminated the penalty for noncompliance with the so-called individual mandate to acquire insurance. The penalty had been pivotal in 2012 when the Supreme Court upheld the law as a legitimate use of Congress’ constitutional taxing power.

Even some conservatives saw the attack as an especially weak one. In seeking to invalidate the whole law, Texas was asking the court do something that Congress itself wasn’t willing to do, even with Republicans in control.

“The question was never whether Texas would lose but how,” said Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

The rejection came in the form of a 7-2 decision that said the challengers, which included two individuals, lacked the legal right to sue because they hadn’t shown they were injured by the now-toothless individual mandate.

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the majority opinion, an assignment that under the court’s normal practices came from Roberts. The majority included Trump appointees Kavanaugh and Barrett, as well as conservative stalwart Clarence Thomas.

During her confirmation hearing in October, Senate Democrats tried to cast Barrett as a potential vote to invalidate Obamacare.

“Anyone who was hoping or fearing that this would finally be the time the court struck down Obamacare, they were either misunderstanding or being disingenuous,” said Ilya Shapiro, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute. It should end the “demagoguery that was thrown at Amy Coney Barrett at her confirmation hearings that she was supposedly appointed to take health care away from poor people.”