A federal district court in Philadelphia ruled against the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Trump administration on Wednesday, blocking exemptions that prevent religious groups from being required to cover birth control costs in their health plans.
Despite previous failed attempts to force the sisters to conform, the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey sued the Trump administration — joined by intervenors Little Sisters of the Poor — over a religious exception to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) contraception mandate established during the first Trump admin.
Wednesday’s ruling blocked “religious and moral carve-outs to an ObamaCare requirement that all employer health plans cover contraception at no cost,” according to The Hill. “District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia issued a summary judgment that the rules were arbitrary, capricious and an overreach of the authority of the agencies that wrote them in 2017.”
The sisters have vowed to appeal the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals.
“It’s bad enough that the district court issued a nationwide ruling invalidating federal religious conscience rules. But even worse is that the district court simply ducked the glaring constitutional issues in this case, after waiting five years and not even holding a hearing. It is absurd to think the Little Sisters might need yet another trip to the Supreme Court to end what has now been more than a dozen years of litigation over the same issue,” said Mark Rienzi, the sisters’ lead attorney and president of the Becket Fund.
The Little Sisters of the Poor have been in court for 14 years. The trouble started in 2012 when women’s health amendments, which required employers to include contraceptives and abortifacients in their health care plans, were added to the ACA. The mandate contained no religious exemption for organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor. The sisters took their dispute all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided unanimously in their favor in 2016.
“This unanimous decision is a huge win for the Little Sisters, religious liberty, and all Americans. The Court has accepted the government’s concession that it could deliver these services without the Little Sisters,” Rienzi said at the time.
In 2017, the Trump administration expanded exceptions to the contraception mandate, including a guaranteed religious exemption. Several states have tried to force the sisters to provide contraception. They took their case to the Supreme Court and won again in 2020. They won an additional case against New York earlier this year.
Jacqueline Annis-Levings is a correspondent for the Federalist. She is a rising junior at Patrick Henry College, where she is majoring in English.
