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In dissent, Judges J. Harvie Wilkinson and G. Steven Agee, joined by Judge Paul V. Niemeyer, said the majority’s ruling had endorsed a pernicious trend.

“It takes no special genius to know what this insidious formula is producing,” they wrote. “Our country is now plagued by a proliferation of pre-election litigation that creates confusion and turmoil and that threatens to undermine public confidence in the federal courts, state agencies and the elections themselves.”

In the Supreme Court, the Trump campaign urged the justices to intercede.

“This case involves an extraordinary attempt by an unelected state board of elections to rewrite the unambiguous terms of a statute enacted in June by a bipartisan state legislature to set time, place, and manner requirements for absentee voting in response to the Covid-19 pandemic,” the brief said.

The board responded that it had the statutory authority to act. A state law gave it emergency powers to be used when elections are disrupted by natural disasters.

“In the past three years alone, the board has twice extended the absentee-ballot receipt deadline after hurricanes hit the state’s coast,” its brief said. “No one challenged those extensions.”

Justice Thomas said he would have granted the stay sought by the Republicans, but he gave no reasons.

Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Alito, criticized “the board’s constitutional overreach.”

Its actions, Justice Gorsuch wrote, “do damage to faith in the written Constitution as law, to the power of the people to oversee their own government, and to the authority of legislatures.”