WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday called for additional briefing on alternative ways that employees of religious organizations could receive contraceptive coverage mandated by the Affordable Care Act without involving the organizations themselves.

The new order could mean that the court is deadlocked on the case, which was argued last week. Earlier in the day, it said it had evenly split on a major case involving public employee unions. In the wake of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death last month, the court is left with eight members.

The court was divided last week after arguments in the contraceptive case.

The court’s four liberals seemed to agree that the Obama administration had offered an acceptable compromise for religiously affiliated organizations such as universities, hospitals and charities that want to be freed from the obligation to supply their female employees with no-cost contraceptive coverage, which the organizations say violates their religious beliefs.

The accommodation requires the groups to tell the government they object, then allows the government to work with the groups’ insurers to provide the coverage without the organization’s involvement or financial support.

But the member who could provide a fifth vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy, agreed with the court’s other conservatives that it sounded as though the government were “hijacking” the insurance plans to provide contraceptive coverage rather than finding a way to provide the coverage without involving the groups.

In the order, the court directed both sides to file briefs that “address whether and how contraceptive coverage may be obtained by petitioners’ employees through petitioners’ insurance companies, but in a way that does not require any involvement of petitioners beyond their own decision to provide health insurance without contraceptive coverage to their employees.”

The court went into unusual specificity in asking the parties to address how that could happen, and made a suggestion.

It said the groups could contract to provide health insurance for their employees but inform the insurance company that they did not want the plan to include contraceptive coverage that they found objectionable.

Then the insurance company could “separately notify petitioners’ employees that the insurance company will provide cost-free contraceptive coverage, and that such coverage is not paid for by petitioners and is not provided through petitioners’ health plan.”

Under such a plan, the organizations would not have to submit a form to the government or their insurance companies addressing the coverage.

The court added: “The parties may address other proposals along similar lines, avoiding repetition of discussion in prior briefing.”

The briefing should be done by April 20, the court said.

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