That's how all cases are appealed to the Supreme Court. SCOTUS has sharply limited original jurisdiction, applying to only a handful of constitutionally-create

That's how all cases are appealed to the Supreme Court. SCOTUS has sharply limited original jurisdiction, applying to only a handful of constitutionally-created categories, so all other appeals come via a petition for a writ of certiorari which lists questions they want the Supreme Court to answer. In this case, it seems like they lost twice at the lower levels, but got the Supreme Court to hear the appeal possibly because of the circuit split mentioned on Wikipedia, which indicates that two different circuits have come to different legal opinions on a matter. This is one of the things somewhat likely to attract the Supreme Court's attention to a case, since they can set a precedent to decide who was right and make the application of the law a bit more uniform.