LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A federal appeals court will allow a hotly contested Utah law banning price fixing for contact lenses to go into effect.

The decision handed down Friday from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver comes after three of the nation’s largest contact lens manufacturers sued to block the measure. The law could have wide-ranging effects on the roughly $4 billion contact lens market, which has some 38 million American consumers.

Alcon Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson and Bausch & Lomb say it’s a brazen overreach written to give Utah-based discount seller 1-800 Contacts an illegal end run around manufacturers’ minimum prices.

But the Utah Attorney General says the companies are wrongly driving up prices.

The decision allows the law to go into effect while a legal battle over the measure works its way through the courts.