Little Sisters of the Poor lose US contraceptive mandate case

By CathNews New Zealand

August 19th, 2025

The US Supreme Court where the Little Sisters of the Poor won their case in 2020, before the latest ruling in a lower court (Kjetil Ree/Wikimedia Commons)

A federal court in the United States has ruled against the Little Sisters of the Poor in their long-running legal dispute over government contraception mandates. Source: Catholic News Agency.

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 US 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”, the August 13 ruling stated.

Diana Thomson, a senior attorney with legal advocacy group Becket, told CNA that 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 latest ruling as “cutting-floor arguments” that the states had largely ignored several years ago.

“Instead of dropping the case, Pennsylvania and New Jersey revitalised their cutting-floor arguments that they chose not to pursue at the Supreme Court last time and brought them in the district court,” she said.

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.

New Jersey and Pennsylvania had brought the lawsuit against multiple federal agencies and officials, though the Little Sisters of the Poor were attached to the lawsuit as “defendant-intervenors”. The sisters will appeal the ruling, Ms Thomson said.

“I assume the Trump administration will appeal also,” she said. “But the Little Sisters’ appeal is already on file.

“We will appeal all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to.”

FULL STORY

Federal court rules against Little Sisters of the Poor in latest contraception lawsuit (By Daniel Payne/CNA)