After a federal judge dealt a blow to the national eviction moratorium on Wednesday, the potential impact on vulnerable tenants in the D.C. region is just beginning to come into view.

Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Donald Trump appointee at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a 20-page ruling that said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lacked the authority to issue a sweeping eviction ban last year. The U.S. Department of Justice quickly filed a notice of appeal of the decision and says it will seek an emergency stay of the order.

“The Department of Justice respectfully disagrees with today’s decision of the district court,” Brian M. Boynton, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Division, wrote in a statement.

While the public awaits a decision on the stay, it’s not likely that Judge Friedrich’s ruling will immediately affect tenants in the Washington region, experts say. In D.C., the city remains under a comprehensive eviction ban that is not affected by the ruling, and impacts on Virginia and Maryland — which have a patchwork of protections in place, though no real eviction ban — may differ depending on the court where eviction cases are filed, says Eric Dunn, director of litigation at the National Housing Law Project.

“This is the fifth federal court opinion since February declaring that the CDC order wasn’t authorized. But the thing is, none of these federal court decisions are actually binding on the state court judges who hear eviction cases,” Dunn says. “You have lots of different judges that hear evictions, and each judge might have their own opinion.”

Renters United Maryland, a coalition of tenant advocates in the state, is urging renters not to panic. In a statement, the organization pointed to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s executive order on evictions, which continues to provide a limited legal defense to residents facing eviction due to nonpayment of rent during the health crisis.

In Virginia, landlords and tenants are required to work together to access rent assistance before the landlord can proceed with an eviction, and residents who lost income due to COVID-19 can also request a 60-day postponement of their case. Some advocates are also hopeful that judges won’t heed the ruling.

“We still have faith that the courts will continue to uphold this moratorium in Virginia,” says Elaine Poon with Legal Aid in Charlottesville.

But none of this matters if the tenant doesn’t go to court or doesn’t have adequate representation, says John Pollock with the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel. Nationally, only 3% of tenants have a lawyer to defend them in eviction cases.

“You’re talking about one of the most complicated legal landscapes that’s ever existed in housing, and [very few] tenants have a lawyer to try to navigate it,” Pollock says.

With the CDC order scheduled to expire at the end of June, tenant advocates also worry that some judges will begin issuing eviction judgements before billions of dollars in federal rent assistance reaches tenants who need it.

“We really need time for the rent assistance to be effective, and it’s frustrating to see landlords continue to challenge the moratoria when they have all this relief that Congress created just for them,” Pollock says.