A US federal court has ruled against the Little Sisters of the Poor in their long-running legal dispute over government contraception mandates, dealing a blow to the religious order even after multiple court victories, including at the Supreme Court. Source: National Catholic Register.
The legal advocacy group Becket said yesterday that the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled in favour of both New Jersey and Pennsylvania in finding that the federal government had not followed protocol when issuing exemptions to contraceptive requirements, including for the Little Sisters.
The district court said that a set of religious exemptions granted by the federal government during the first Trump Administration were “arbitrary [and] capricious” and failed to adhere to the requirements of the federal Administrative Procedure Act.
The court has vacated those exemptions “in their entirety,” yesterday’s ruling said.
Diana Thomson, a senior attorney with Becket, said the case is the same one that saw the Little Sisters win a victory at the US Supreme Court in 2020 when a majority of the court’s justices said the exemptions to the contraceptive mandate were legal.
She described the procedural questions in the August 13 ruling as “cutting-floor arguments” that the states had largely ignored several years ago.
The district court accepted those arguments “even though the Supreme Court already blessed the rules,” Ms Thomson said.
The court is “trying to find a loophole” to the 2020 Supreme Court ruling, she said.
The sisters will appeal the ruling, Ms Thomson said.
In a separate statement, Mark Rienzi, the president of Becket and the lead attorney for the Little Sisters, said it was “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,” he argued.
“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,” he said, adding: “We will fight as far as we need to fight to protect the Little Sisters’ right to care for the elderly in peace.”
FULL STORY
Federal Court Rules Against Little Sisters of the Poor in Latest Contraception Lawsuit (National Catholic Register)
