The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday decided not to halt the state high court's ruling that mail-in ballots will be accepted up to three days after Election Day, even without a postmark.

With just two weeks until Nov. 3, that ruling puts an end to the legal challenge mounted by the state Republican Party and top Republican officials within the state — at least for now.

In two separate applications for a stay, the nation's highest court deadlocked — a 4-4 tie, with only eight justices on the court — on whether to halt the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's September decision that ballots must be counted when received days following the election.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh voted in favor of the stay, while Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's three liberal justices voted against it.

The applications argued that the state high court legislated from the bench when it ruled to extend the mail ballot reception deadline from 8 p.m. Nov. 3 to Nov. 6. The state legislature passed and Gov. Tom Wolf signed one bill earlier in 2020 to address concerns over COVID-19 as it pertains to the election, and that bill set the deadline to Election Day night.

This stay was unlikely to have been denied, given recent decisions in other, similar cases from other states, in which the court erred on the sides of state legislatures rather than courts. The justices did not issue any opinion.