The Supreme Court offered a further sign Thursday that it favors letting employers with religious objections avoid the Obama administration’s so-called contraception mandate.

Over the vehement objection of its three female justices, the court blocked the administration from forcing an evangelical college in Illinois to sanction insurance coverage for emergency birth control, even though it would not have had to offer the coverage itself.

In doing so, the court made clear that it’s not done with the religious liberty issue following Monday’s ruling that closely-held, for-profit corporations with objections to certain contraception methods do not have to offer this type of coverage to their employees.

Noting that appeals courts across the country are divided on how religious nonprofits such as charities, hospitals and colleges should be handled under the regulation, the court said “such division is a traditional ground for certiorari” — a decision by the justices to resolve the issue.

In the meantime, the court said women employees of Wheaton College should be able to get emergency contraception services from private insurers — without requiring the college to sign a form it claims would make it complicit in the transaction.

Ironically, it was that arrangement — in which objecting religious nonprofits would sign over their responsibility to offer contraception coverage to insurers or third-party administrators — that the court cited Monday as a potential solution for profit-making companies such as the craft store chain Hobby Lobby.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, dissented from Thursday’s order. She said the accommodation already granted to nonprofits “is the least restrictive means of furthering the government’s compelling interests in public health and women’s well-being.”

“Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word. Not so to­day,” Sotomayor said. Declaring insufficient the very accommodation it held out Monday as a possible solution for Hobby Lobby “evinces disregard for even the newest of this court’s precedents and undermines confidence in this institution,” she said.

I’ve never had any confidence in liars who pimp for rightwing religious nutballs, scum who lied through their teeth for validation from the equally-corrupt Congress which approved their nominations.

You can find enough members of Congress nowadays to validate a Supreme Court parking ticket for a bishop.