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Articulating his view of judicial restraint during an address to Georgetown University law graduates in 2006, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that the Supreme Court should keep its rulings limited strictly to the issues squarely before it, because, as he put it, “if it is not necessary to decide more to a case . . . it is necessary not to decide more.” That doctrine of avoidance goes double for cases in which it is impossible for the court to decide anything at all — or so it would seem based on the justices’ hyper-cautious disposition Monday of a controversial case involving religious-freedom objections to the contraceptive mandate under the Affordable Care Act. (5/16)

An evenly divided Supreme Court skirted the major legal questions arising from a dispute over President Obama’s healthcare program and instead announced a compromise Monday designed to clear the way for women working for religious organizations to receive the free birth control promised under the Affordable Care Act. In a short, unanimous decision, the justices said that the Catholic charities who filed the suits and the Obama administration – at the high court’s strong urging -- had agreed in recent weeks that the female workers may "receive cost-free contraceptive coverage" without infringing on the religious rights of the church-based employers. (David G. Savage, 5/16)

The Supreme Court devised an unusual legal halfway house on Monday that may finally resolve the saga of the Little Sisters of the Poor and their challenge to ObamaCare’s birth-control mandate. The question now is whether the Obama Administration will accept this invitation for a compromise that respects free religious exercise, or continue to force believers to submit to government. The Little Sisters, an order of Catholic nuns who run hospices, object to their health insurance plan covering contraception including abortifacients. They and other nonprofit religious organizations like parochial schools and soup kitchens sued over the 2012 “accommodation” that supposedly allowed them to opt out. Typical of this Administration’s pinched understanding of religious liberty, the Little Sisters believe the “self-certification” form they must sign implicates them in a moral offense. (5/16)

The long saga of the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate — which requires that contraception be covered as part of private health plans — took another turn at the Supreme Court today. And the Court — which, don’t forget, is still divided 4-4 between liberals and conservatives — sent it back down to the appeals courts, essentially telling them to find a solution to this problem that the religiously-affiliated organizations in this case will find acceptable, practically begging them to be reasonable while doing everything it can to make sure their tender feelings aren’t hurt. (Paul Waldman, 5/16)

First the good news: Though it was more a TKO than a straight-up ruling, the Little Sisters of the Poor prevailed at the Supreme Court on Monday in their fight against the ObamaCare contraceptive mandate. True, the justices made clear that they were not ruling on the merits, which is why so many headlines speak of the court’s having “punted” on the case. Even so, in a unanimous decision they made the path forward much easier for the sisters and much more difficult for the Obama administration. (William McGurn, 5/16)

The Little Sisters of the Poor weren’t the only temporary winners at the Supreme Court on Monday. The U.S. economy also received a reprieve as a 6-2 majority remanded a case that could have opened up a vast new avenue for class-action lawsuits. The case concerns the standing to sue under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This 1970 law has become a favorite class-action vehicle of the plaintiffs bar, and Spokeo v. Robins was an attempt to leverage the ability to file a class-action suit even though it isn’t clear that Thomas Robins suffered a concrete injury. A federal judge dismissed the case for lack of standing, but the friends of the trial bar on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals revived it. (5/16)

Every day that passes without a ninth justice undermines the Supreme Court’s ability to function, and leaves millions of Americans waiting for justice or clarity as major legal questions are unresolved. On Monday, the eight-member court avoided issuing a ruling on one of this term’s biggest cases, Zubik v. Burwell, which challenges the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers’ health care plans cover the cost of birth control for their employees. In an unsigned opinion, the court sent the lawsuits back to the lower federal courts, with instructions to try to craft a compromise that would be acceptable to everyone. (5/16)