The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a setback to President Donald Trump on his embattled travel ban Wednesday, forcing the administration to accept people with grandparents, cousins and other relatives in the U.S.

The three-sentence order by the justices -- who last month let the president start restricting entry by people from six mostly Muslim countries -- gave Trump a partial win on a separate issue. The court temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that would have opened the way for potentially thousands of refugees to enter the country in the coming months.

That portion of the Supreme Court order applies while the administration appeals on the issue to a federal appellate court in San Francisco.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented from part of Wednesday’s order, saying they would have let Trump also refuse entry to people with grandparents, cousins and others in the U.S. while the case is on appeal.

One of the travel ban’s challengers, Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin, said in a statement that the order "confirms we were right to say that the Trump administration overreached in trying to unilaterally keep families apart from each other."

The Supreme Court plans to hear arguments Oct. 10 on the travel ban. The latest scuffle centered on the rules that will apply in the interim.

The justices on June 26 let the government enforce a limited travel ban, saying the U.S. had to admit at least some close relatives though the court didn’t list all the relationships that qualified. The Trump administration then agreed to let people enter if they had a parent, spouse, fiance, child, sibling, son- or daughter-in-law, or a parent-in-law in the country.

Grandparents, Cousins

But the government contended it could still exclude people whose closest relatives in the U.S. are grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, or siblings-in-law.

A federal trial judge in Hawaii said the administration’s standard was too restrictive and couldn’t be squared with the Supreme Court decision. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson also said the government couldn’t exclude refugees once a resettlement agency had promised that it would provide basic services for them.

The refugee suspension could affect as many as 24,000 people who are covered by what are known as "assurances," formal promises by resettlement agencies to provide housing and other necessities. Advocates say those people, a subset of the 200,000 seeking entry into the U.S. as refugees, have been thoroughly vetted and don’t pose a national security threat.

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Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the group is "deeply concerned about the effect of today’s ruling on thousands of refugees who seek to escape dangerous situations." The ACLU is challenging the travel ban in a connected case.

Trump asked the Supreme Court to clarify its June 26 decision, contending that Watson disobeyed it. The high court denied that request in Wednesday’s order, though it partially granted one of the administration’s backup suggestions by blocking the portion of Watson’s ruling that addressed refugees.

Trump’s March 6 executive order said the 90-day travel ban and 120-day refugee ban would give officials time to assess U.S. vetting procedures and would address an “unacceptably high” risk that terrorists could slip into the country. Lower courts had blocked the ban, saying Trump overstepped his authority and unconstitutionally targeted Muslims.

The case is Trump v. Hawaii, 16-1540.