A panel of federal appellate judges on Saturday temporarily blocked an Atlanta-based venture fund from awarding $20,000 grants to Black female entrepreneurs, writing that the program was “racially exclusionary” and “substantially likely” to violate a federal law prohibiting racial discrimination in contracting.

The temporary injunction issued by a panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit prevents the private Fearless Fund from closing its application window. The fund was sued this summer by a conservative group alleging that its program discriminated on the basis of race by exclusively handing out grants to Black female business owners.