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The tie announced by the Supreme Court Tuesday is the kind of divide that Democrats have warned about since Republican senators announced their plan not to fill Scalia's seat until a new president is sworn in. | AP Photo SCOTUS hits first post-Scalia deadlock in credit case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday announced its first deadlock since Justice Antonin Scalia's unexpected death last month, splitting 4-4 in a dispute over an obscure federal rule applying gender-discrimination protections to spouses of applicants for bank loans.

As a result of the court's failure to muster a majority one way or another, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling at issue is upheld but only for the seven states in that circuit: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, as well as North and South Dakota. A conflicting ruling is on the books in the 6th Circuit, which includes Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. Another federal appeals court, the 7th Circuit, seems to have sided with the 8th, but it is unclear whether that 7th Circuit ruling was definitive.

The Supreme Court's action hands a win to the Missouri community bank at issue in the case but leaves in place the split in federal court rulings on the question of whether the Equal Credit Opportunity Act can be applied to those who guarantee bank loans or are required to do so but don't apply for them. As a result, Americans in some states have the protection of the rule the Federal Reserve Bank issued decades ago, imposing such a requirement, those in others don't and in still others the Fed's authority to enforce the rule is unclear.

It's the kind of divide that Democrats have warned about since Republican senators announced their plan not to fill Scalia's seat until a new president is sworn in. However, it's not the kind of case likely to cause chaos in the courts or on the streets. It remains to be seen whether any of the court's more high-profile pending cases, on issues like abortion clinic regulations, executive power over immigration, or religious freedom protections from Obamacare mandates, prompt a similar 4-4 tie. It's also unknown whether the court would hand down a 4-4 ruling in such cases or hold them over for possible re-argument next term.

In Hawkins & Patterson v Community Bank of Raymore on Tuesday, the justices observed tradition by issuing no opinion or tally of votes and simply announcing that the 8th Circuit's "judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court."

Reports from oral arguments in the case, argued on the first day of the Supreme Court's term last October, suggested the justices were leaning toward the bank and that Scalia also favored the bank's reading of the statute over the Federal Reserve's position.



CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this story omitted two 8th Circuit states.