Save the Little Sisters of the Poor!

David Harsanyi on Aug 15, 2025

It's enraging.

More than a decade after the Obama administration tried to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to buy contraception for their employees, including abortifacient drugs, states are still hounding the nuns in court.

At its heart, Obamacare was a massive welfare program meant to redistribute health care costs to the middle class. But it was also a social engineering project aimed at coercing religious organizations and businesses to adopt progressive values. The Affordable Care Act mandated employers, including not-for-profits like Little Sisters of the Poor, pay for contraceptives in their worker-provided health-insurance as an "essential health benefit" under the euphemistic category of "preventative and wellness services."

There was no "religious exemption."

It's worth taking a step back and thinking about that term. The very idea that an American citizen should be impelled to ask the state for an "exemption" to practice their faith is an assault on the fundamental idea of liberty. Imagine having to ask the state for an exemption to exercise your free speech?

What makes this case even more unsettling, of course, is that the state is demanding citizens engage in activity that is explicitly against their faith.

Now, there may well be numerous ongoing theological disputes within the Catholic Church. The use of contraception and abortion aren't among them. There is absolutely no question that nuns hold genuine, long-standing religious convictions. And there is no question that progressives want to smash them.

Nevertheless, the Little Sisters spent years in court, working their way up to the Supreme Court and winning protections against the federal government (twice). In 2017, the Trump administration exempted religious groups like the Little Sisters from the Obamacare mandate.

Government, however, bolstered with unlimited taxpayer funds, can hunt its prey in perpetuity. So, states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania began their own lawsuits against the Little Sisters.

This week, in a nationwide ruling, Judge Wendy Beetlestone, chief judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, found that the Trump administration's expansion of religious exemptions from the contraception mandate was "arbitrary and capricious."

Religious nonprofits and businesses will again have to ask for special accommodations from the Health and Human Services to avoid buying abortifacients. Even if the Trump administration grants every one of them, one day there will be authoritarians in charge who won't. Even then, nonprofit employees will still be guaranteed contraception through health plans paid for by employers.

Beetlestone, incidentally, was the same judge that issued a nationwide injunction against the contraception exemption back in 2017, arguing it was "difficult" to think of any rule that "intrudes more into the lives of women." The Supreme Court overturned it in 2020 by 7-2 majority. Because no one has a right to free condoms.

Indeed, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act holds that the state must have a "compelling interest" and use the least restrictive means when burdening religious practice. Free birth control isn't a compelling interest. And fining religious organizations millions of dollars to pressure them into abandoning their beliefs is perhaps the most restrictive means of action, short of throwing nuns in prison.

You'd think attacking a group of nuns who offer end-of-life care for the elderly would be a public relations nightmare for Democrats. Yet, they've never really shied away from it. Because the point is to intimidate others.

In many ways, the Little Sisters' struggle is reminiscent of the travails of Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who refuses to create unique message cakes for gay weddings. Phillips is now embroiled in his umpteenth court case over his thought crimes. The message is that dissent from those who practice their faith will be punished.

Take the Catholic Charities adoption agencies, who shuttered in numerous states due to laws and policies regarding compelling them to adopt kids to same-sex couples.

The attacks will continue until the Supreme Court upholds the clear language and intent of the First Amendment and religious liberty. It already punted in the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a 7-2 Supreme Court decision in favor of Jack Phillips, barred these attacks only if state officials openly demeaning their target's faith. It was so narrow it was largely useless.

It shouldn't matter why the state is steamrolling the religious liberty of nuns, or anyone else for that matter. The problem is that Obamacare mandate is authoritarian and unconstitutional. The only way to fix the problem is to overturn it.

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David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books -- the most recent, "The Rise of Blue Anon," available now. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on X @davidharsanyi.