Will court's sidestep affect Wheaton College case?
The Supreme Court failed on Monday to resolve a knotty dispute over birth control between faith-based groups, possibly including Wheaton College, and the Obama administration.
The Supreme Court justices asked lower courts to take another look at the issue in a search for a compromise, issuing an unsigned, unanimous opinion.
The case concerns the administration's arrangement for sparing faith-based groups from having to pay for birth control for women covered under their health plans.
Wheaton College has a case before lower courts asking for a similar birth control decision, but attorneys didn't respond to a request for comment about how Monday's decision affects the DuPage County institution.
"The court expresses no view on the merits of the cases," the justices wrote, ending a major confrontation over President Barack Obama's health care law with a whimper and no resolution.
It was the latest indication of the short-handed court's struggle to find a majority for important cases taken up before Justice Antonin Scalia's death. The matter almost certainly will not return to the Supreme Court before the 2016 presidential election, and perhaps not until a new justice is confirmed to take Scalia's seat, if at all.
Already two cases have resulted in 4-4 ties since the conservative's death in February.
The lack of a resolution leaves the government able for now to ensure that women covered by faith-based groups' health plans have access to cost-free contraceptives.
But the groups, which include nonprofit colleges and charities, won't face fines for not adhering to administration procedures for objecting to birth control benefits.
By complying, they argued, they would be complicit in making contraceptives available in violation of their religious beliefs as their insurers or insurance administrators would then assume responsibility for providing birth control.
Wheaton College made a similar argument before a federal judge in June 2015.
The court denied its request to allow the college to stop providing certain contraceptives under its insurance plan while the suit was pending.
The justices appeared evenly divided on the question when they heard arguments in late March.
And the court seemed to acknowledge the division shortly after, when it ordered the two sides to file a new and unusual round of legal briefs in search of a compromise, perhaps by making contraceptive coverage available without requiring a notice of objection.
• Daily Herald staff writer Mary Hansen contributed to this report.