The Supreme Court’s rejection on Thursday of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s request to be spared from being sentenced for 34 felonies was just a few lines long, and it made modest and practical points.

He remains free to appeal his conviction on charges of falsifying business records, the court’s unsigned order said, and appearing by video to face no concrete punishment in a New York court will impose a relatively insubstantial burden.

More striking than the majority’s reasoning was the 5-to-4 vote in the case, which provided a vivid and telling snapshot of the court as it prepares to face a second Trump administration and the torrent of litigation that is sure to follow.

It was no surprise that the court’s three Democratic appointees — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — were in the majority. They had issued bitter dissents, after all, when the court’s six Republican appointees granted Mr. Trump broad immunity in July from federal charges that he had tried to subvert the 2020 election.

That ruling effectively scuttled the case, and it raised concerns that the court would not act as a check against Mr. Trump if he returned to the White House. Those concerns deepened on news that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. had conferred with Mr. Trump by phone on Tuesday.

If the votes of the three liberal justices were predictable, those of the two conservative members of the court who voted with them on Thursday — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett — were more surprising.

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