I'm afraid I don't quite follow. Yes, the supreme court is an appeals court, but what I'm saying is that you can't appeal from a SCOTUS decision, so it's not like a case with a 5-4 decision can be resolved through some other method.

As for stare decisis, the Supreme Court often deals with cases for which there is no precedent. Isn't that precisely the type of case we're dealing with here?

I am saying that if the case comes down to a 5-4 decision, the court issues no ruling, and in all respects participants act as if a writ of certiorari had not been granted, except that you extend any relevant deadlines by the amount of time the supreme court spent dealing with the case.

There are no cases in which there is no precedent. It may be a new technology, or a new law, or a new amendment, but there is never an utter lack of precedent. In this case, I used stare decisis to mean that the court should choose to let the decision stand and not overrule the lower court.