On Tuesday, the Hawaii Supreme Court temporarily suspended a permit, allowing the building of a huge telescope on a mountain that is considered as sacred by many Native Hawaiians.

The court has granted the request of the telescope opponents for an emergency stay of the success of the permit until December 2, or until court gives any other order.

The court has issued the ruling because of the gathering of protesters on Mauna Kea with the hope to block telescope work from resuming. Since April, work has been stuck at a point amid protests.

After hearing the ruling, Kealoha Pisciotta, a longtime opponent of telescope and one of the plaintiffs challenging the permit repeated many times, ‘Mahalo ke akua’, Thank God’.

Previous week, telescope officials made an announcement that a crew would make a comeback on the site this month for doing vehicle maintenance work but they didn’t mention any particular date.

The project representatives and the state attorney general's office didn't immediately speak anything over the ruling.

Richard Naiwieha Wurdeman is the plaintiffs' attorney said they can’t legally do any work on Mauna Kea. He was the one who filed the emergency request late Monday after he heard news reports that telescope crews would return to the mountain on Wednesday.

The state Board of Land and Natural Resources issued a conservation district use permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope in 2013, allowing the nonprofit company building the telescope to carry on construction on the sites that come within the Mauna Kea conservation district.