The Little Sisters are back in court defending their ministry

In 2011, the federal government mandated that the Little Sisters must provide contraceptives and abortifacients in violation of their deeply held religious beliefs or pay millions of dollars in fines. After a long battle in the lower courts, during which the government told the nuns they were fighting an “invisible dragon,” the Supreme Court stepped in—first in 2013 and again in 2016—ordering the government to leave the Little Sisters alone and find another solution. The government admitted that it had other ways to distribute contraceptives, and in 2017, issued a new rule with broad religious exemptions for religious ministries like the Little Sisters of the Poor.  

But Pennsylvania, California, and several other states immediately sued, arguing that the government broke the law by exempting the Little Sisters and other religious groups, threatening not only the Little Sisters’ ministry but also religious accommodations for countless others. 

The Little Sisters went back to the Supreme Court and successfully defended their ministry again. In 2020, the Court ruled 7-2 to uphold the Sisters’ religious conscience protections, allowing them to continue serving the elderly poor and dying without threat of millions of dollars in fines.  

 But the states have continued fighting in court to take away the Sisters’ hard-won protection. In 2025, a federal district judge sided with Pennsylvania, issuing a nationwide injunction rejecting the conscience rule which safeguards the Sisters’ ministry.  

After multiple trips to the Supreme Court, you would think the states would get the memo that suing nuns is a fool’s errand. Fifteen years into this fight, the pattern is clear: hostile governments keep losing, and the Sisters keep winning. 

The Little Sisters of the Poor are a group of Catholic nuns who are devoted to caring for the elderly poor. In the Little Sisters’ homes, no one dies alone. The elderly and dying are cared for with love and dignity—regardless of wealth or status—as if they were Christ himself, until God calls them home. These religious women are loving and joyful in their ministry, even as they go begging door to door to provide for their communities.

The Little Sisters of the Poor didn’t ask for this legal fight. They exhausted every option possible before going to court, but they cannot do the important work of caring for the elderly poor without protection from government regulations that force them to violate their faith. 

Our Constitution does not require the government to punish any religious person for living out their faith. The government already recognizes religious exemptions for employees who cannot work on the Sabbath, doctors and nurses who cannot participate in religiously objectionable procedures, and faith groups that choose to hire only individuals who share their beliefs. Followed to their conclusion, Pennsylvania’s arguments would threaten the longstanding, long-accepted tradition of religious exemptions to federal laws that protect religious minorities and allow diverse beliefs to flourish in our society.