The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted emergency relief for the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission in a dispute over political broadcast advertising rates ahead of the midterms.

Over dissent from Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, it’s the second time in as many months that the high court has acted on the matter after backing Republicans in an earlier round as well.

At the heart of the litigation is the question of whether federal law only gives candidates themselves certain favorable rates, or whether political parties and joint fundraising committees with noncandidate members can also benefit. The FCC and GOP groups have argued for the latter interpretation, which stands to benefit them politically because Democratic candidates generally raise more money than their committees, and vice versa for Republicans.

Last month, the justices said that a federal appeals court lacked jurisdiction when it sided with four Democratic congressional candidates: Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan, former Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and former Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina. Jackson dissented from that ruling.

The Democrats then brought another challenge to force the merits of the issue. A divided panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit sided with them again, accusing the FCC of “gamesmanship” ahead of the midterms.

“If allowed to continue dragging its feet, the FCC will have evaded meaningful judicial review of its newly created rule,” Judges Robert King and James Wynn wrote Oct. 7. The majority gave the FCC a 12 p.m. ET deadline on Oct. 9 to resolve the candidates’ application to review their challenge to the agency’s interpretation.

GOP-appointed Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III dissented from the Democratic-appointed majority’s order, calling it “a direct affront” to the high court’s prior ruling that favored Republicans.

The administration leaned on Wilkinson’s dissent when it turned back to the Supreme Court, seeking to halt the appellate order and Oct. 9 deadline. Chief Justice John Roberts, who fields emergency requests from the 4th Circuit, granted the agency temporary relief pending further word from the court.

In their opposition to the FCC, the Democrats said the agency was engaging in “blatant procedural trench warfare to stave off judicial review of an unlawful agency directive until it is too late to matter.” They told the justices that they’re “up for election in just over three weeks” and are “experiencing exactly the deluge of party spending at the candidate rate that Republican Party committees promised to unleash to ‘obliterate’ them in response to the challenged agency directive.”

The national GOP senatorial and congressional committees brought a parallel Supreme Court challenge to the 4th Circuit order, which the Democrats likewise opposed.

The full Supreme Court weighed in on Wednesday, backing the administration in an unsigned opinion that said the appeals court improperly tried to force the FCC to act on that deadline.

“The Communications Act requires the Commission to act on every application it receives, but it does not obligate the Commission to act within a particular timeframe,” the court said over noted dissent from two of the court’s three Democratic-appointed justices, Sotomayor and Jackson. The pair did not explain their reasoning for dissenting.

The majority said it would be wrong to make the agency “triage its ongoing deliberation process and prepare a final order on an extremely expedited timeline.”

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