Supreme Court contraceptive punt shouldn’t have happened, Obama says

President Barack Obama said Monday that a decision by the Supreme Court to punt on a contraception mandate case would have “turned out differently,” if there had been another justice on the court.

Obama has railed against Senate Republicans who refuse to hear his Supreme Court nomination for months now, and Monday he took it a step further during a live interview with BuzzFeed News’ Chris Geidner.

The Supreme Court announced Monday morning that it would not rule on whether religious objectors must play a role in offering contraceptive coverage to their employees. Justices had previously said they would hear the case, listened to oral arguments and then made the final decision to punt the decision back to seven lower courts.

Justices told the lower courts to seek out a compromise between the parties, and some speculated that the odd order from the Court was due to the lacking justice.

“One reading of Monday’s developments was that the Court, now functioning with eight Justices, was having difficulty composing a majority in support of a definite decision on the legal questions,” wrote Lyle Denniston, of SCOTUSblog. “Thus, what emerged had all of the appearance of a compromise meant to help generate majority support among the Justices.”

Supreme Court Justices have no obligation to reveal why or how they came to a decision.

Obama further criticized Senate Republicans for refusing to hear and vote on the nomination of Merrick Garland, saying, “this isn’t kindergarten,” and that “they’d be better off” with Obama’s nomination than that of Donald Trump, the all-but-confirmed presidential nominee of the Republican Party.

Obama also said Republicans were setting a precedent of not hearing the opposite party’s nominee that Democrats would continue in the future.

“Then we’re in a position where we won’t be able to fill our Supreme Court,” Obama said.

The interview was supposed to be the first live Facebook interview conducted with the president, but the Facebook video stopped after two minutes, before the president even walked in. Buzzfeed directed viewers to watch it on YouTube instead and it garnered about 17,000 viewers at its peak.

This story was originally published May 16, 2016 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Supreme Court contraceptive punt shouldn’t have happened, Obama says."