The Supreme Court appeared unlikely Monday to endorse Louisiana’s view about whether jury verdicts in state criminal trials must be unanimous.

While Louisiana Solicitor General Elizabeth Murrill said the justices should be cautious about reading the Sixth Amendment as requiring unanimous juries in state criminal proceedings because it would imperil the convictions of 32,000 people who committed serious crimes in her state, Justice Neil Gorsuch indicated he had other interests in mind.

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Jeffrey Fisher, a Stanford Law professor who argued for Ramos on Monday, said the court should take the chance to correct what has historically been an outlier in how the court applies the Bill of Rights to the states.

He said the plain text of the Sixth Amendment may not explicitly say whether criminal juries must be unanimous, but the requirement was common practice dating to before the founding and therefore informs the amendment’s purpose.

“In a nutshell, we are not prepared to take away someone’s liberty, unless a cross-section of the community uniformly agrees that criminal punishment is appropriate,” Fisher said.