I’ve seen this story reported a few places and the language used seems to imply that the Supreme Court to some degree gave its blessing that the lower court’s ruling was as correct. That is wrong.

From Wikipedia article on certiorari.

Conversely, the Supreme Court's denial of a petition for a writ of certiorari is sometimes misunderstood as implying that the Supreme Court approves the decision of the lower court. However, as the Court explained in Missouri v. Jenkins, such a denial "imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case[.]" In particular, a denial of a writ of certiorari means that no binding precedent is created by the denial itself, and the lower court's decision is treated as mandatory authority only within the geographical (or in the case of the Federal Circuit, subject-specific) jurisdiction of that court. The reasons for why a denial of certiorari cannot be treated as implicit approval were set forth in Maryland v. Baltimore Radio Show, Inc. (1950), in which the Court explained the many rationales which could underlie the denial of a writ which have nothing to do with the merits of the case.