The court said that it would hear arguments in the case in February and that the stay would remain in place until it issued its ruling. The justices said they would only address the question of whether the 19 mainly Republican-led states that had sought the stay could pursue their challenge to the measure.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

The court’s order was a provisional victory for the 19 states that had sought to keep Title 42 in place, saying it was needed to prevent a surge of border crossings. "The failure to grant a stay will cause a crisis of unprecedented proportions at the border," lawyers for the states wrote in an emergency application, adding that "daily illegal crossings may more than double."

The precise issue before the court is a complicated, largely procedural question of whether the states should be allowed to intervene in the lawsuit, which had pitted advocates for the migrants colonists against the federal government. A similar group of states won a lower court order in a different court district preventing the end of the restrictions after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in April that it was ending use of the policy.

Courtesy of Skidmark, dropped in the hopper before the ruling came down Thursday evening: