A federal judge delivered a symbolic victory on Monday to Republican National Committee delegates who have chafed against their obligation to support presumptive nominee Donald Trump on the first ballot in Cleveland next week.

In the end, however, the toothless ruling won't likely change much.

Carroll 'Beau' Correll argued that the First Amendment guarantees him the freedom to pick his own horse at the convention, rather than voting in a way that reflects the results of his home state Virginia's March 1 primary election.

Those results awarded Trump 17 of the state's 49 delegates, along with 16 for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, 8 for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, 5 for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and 3 for retired surgeon Ben Carson.

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TOOTHLESS? Republican National Convention delegate Carroll 'Beau' Correll won a symbolic victory in federal court that will protect him from prosecution if he bucks voters and refuses to cast a convention ballot for Donald Trump – but the end result won't likely change

NOT IMPRESSED: Donald Trump's campaign said Monday that the judge's ruling protects the national Republican Party's right to run its convention rules as it sees fit

A Virginia law would have forced the state Republican Party to send those totals to the national party.

But federal judge Robert E. Payne ruled that the state law can't be enforced because governments can't be allowed to have control over how parties choose their nominees.

It's a token win that may only apply to Correll himself since his didn't qualify as a class-action lawsuit. And the national nomination process is managed by the Republican National Committee – not the state parties.

The RNC's rules currently call for the official reading of delegate votes in the way each state's voters, and each state party's rules, assigned them.

The convention's secretary, in other words, will record the votes as the RNC's rules say they should be cast – even if Correll and others were to go rogue.

So unless the rules are changed when the convention's Rules Committee meets this week in Cleveland, Virginia's vote tally next week won't change – even if Correll and 1,000 other delegates were to cast their votes for Mickey Mouse.

Practically speaking, Payne didn't direct the RNC to change course.

RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Walters told The Washington Post on Monday that Payne's ruling 'upholds the right of political parties to set their own rules for national convention delegate selection and allocation.'

'It affirms our First Amendment right to require that delegates be bound to primary results, and it makes clear that delegates are bound under national party rules.'

That much is true: Payne ruled that the GOP can apply its own rules, under which Trump controls more than enough 'bound' delegates – those committed to support him by their state parties' rules – to win the Republican presidential nomination.

SHOWDOWN: The Cleveland, Ohio convention's Rules Committee is meeting this week to hammer out the final rules for convention voting

The rules in force are leftovers from the 2012 convention in Tampa, Florida, giving anti-Trump forces a last hope of tossing out their standard-bearer.

A long-shot effort could force a change in the 2012 rules, 'unbinding' delegates and throwing the Quicken Loans Arena into chaos.

If one-quarter of the 112-member Rules Committee's members were to sign on to a 'minority report' asking for all the convention's delegates to be unbound, the full convention would be required to put the question to a vote.

At that point, anything is possible.

Correll offered NBC News a victory lap on Monday, saying the GOP and the Trump campaign were 'morbidly humiliated' by his federal court victory.

'They put all their chips on the table and they lost all of them — if I were them I'd go hide in a closet in Trump Tower,' he said.

In a statement hours later, he begged fellow anti-Trump delegates to 'take a step forward from the darkness and into the light. Show us that you have the courage to stand for leader of the Free World, appeal to the better angels of our nature, and to deliver this Republic from the abomination of a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton presidency.'

Trump Campaign attorney Don McGahn, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, issued a statement insisting that Payne's ruling will ultimately be seen as a 'fatal blow to the anti-Trump agitators.'