The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a Republican appeal to block the counting of certain Pennsylvania votes in the battleground state. As happens all too often in urgent appeals, the court made no statement. The only published thoughts on the matter came in a brief statement from Justice Samuel Alito, along with fellow Republican nominees Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

Alito's separate letter was not a contradiction. But he chose to write it, and two justices chose to join him, so it's worth explaining its possible meaning and impact on a potentially close election.

This is how the two-paragraph statement began:

Note that Alito called the state court's lawsuit controversial and indicated that he disagreed with it, although he did not disagree with the court's rejection of the challenge to that lawsuit. He then uncritically described the GOP challenge:

So if these three Republican-appointed justices appeared to agree with the Republican challenge, or at least were not critical of it, why didn't they dissent? Alito further explained in the second paragraph of the opinion that the appeal was on technical grounds:

Note that, having previously called the state's ruling “controversial,” he considers the issue raised in the appeal to be “significantly important.” Although, as Alito writes, he expresses no opinion on the merits of the Republican argument, the three justices do not reject it. If anything, one could expect them to endorse this and encourage further challenges in this election.

Of course, this statement only came from three justices, which is not enough to move the court. That raises the question of what the other three Republican nominees — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — would do if faced with a similar appeal in a case that does not raise the issues raised by Alito . Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett have found themselves in the relative middle of the court on some of the court's most important issues these days — and this election is no exception.

It would be helpful here if the court would comment even briefly on these urgent appeals. We shouldn't have to infer from silence what the court is up to. That's what makes a decision like last week's in Virginia troubling, where the majority allowed the state's voter purge without explanation because of dissent from the court's three Democratic nominees. The majority's silence in the Virginia case was arguably worse than in the Pennsylvania case, as emergency relief was granted in Virginia in a case in which lower court judges explained why they denied such relief.

But while a majority of the Supreme Court has not shown a willingness to side with Republicans in all appeals cases so far this election season, Friday's statement could signal that at least three justices are ready to do so when it matters most.

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