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Seems the court is split equally on the case

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ORIGINAL: KenDckey

If I were the religious organizations, without regard to religion, I would just close shop, fire all the employees, and let well enough alone. There is no legal mandate to provide health care, foster care, etc to anyone that I know of. And it would eliminate a lot of issues with the law.

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ORIGINAL: JVoV

There was another split decision today as well. Something about wives being 'forced' to cosign loans for their husbands.

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Legal experts warned that the US Supreme Court would be unable to decide a number of cases as a consequence of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. On Tuesday, the first split decision arrived.
The case of Hawkins v. Community Bank of Raymore won’t send waves throughout the US, but the outcome of a 4-4 ruling by the Supreme Court shows just how complicated deadlocked issues could be moving forward.

Since the decision was a tie and delivered in the name of the whole court, the vote count was not officially released, nor is it known which justice voted for which side.

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Flowers are seen in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. after the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, February 14, 2016. © Carlos Barria5 major SCOTUS cases affected by Scalia's death
Referring to the last decision on the issue rendered by the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eight District, the justices wrote only: “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court.”

As a result, no nationwide precedent has been set, and the Supreme Court leaves intact the lower court’s decision.

The case itself revolved around whether spouses can be held as guarantors for bank loans. In 2008, the Community Bank of Raymore in Missouri approved $2 million in residential development loans to a local company, on the condition that the wives of the two men who owned the business also signed the guarantee.

The women, Valerie Hawkins and Janice Patterson, agreed to do so. After the company failed to make payments on the loans in April 2012 and the bank declared them to be in default, it demanded payment from both the business and the two women who were co-guarantors.

Hawkins and Patterson sued the bank, claiming that they were discriminated against simply because they were married to the men seeking the loans, and that the bank violated the US Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which bans discrimination against applicants based on marital status.

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There was another split decision