A federal district court in Pennsylvania has ruled against the Little Sisters of the Poor in their ongoing legal battle over the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate.
“Not just Catholics should be concerned, I think every American should be concerned about this really gross violation, attack upon, the free exercise of religion,” Bishop Robert Barron said in a video posted to X.
Still another attack on religious liberty. pic.twitter.com/jXOUNxnxrY
— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) August 14, 2025
The court found the religious exemptions that were instituted during the first Trump administration to be “arbitrary [and] capricious.”
“I’m just concerned about an aggressive secularist agenda,” Bishop Barron said in his video. “That’s going after, in this case, women who are caring, out of love for Jesus Christ, for the elderly poor. Why are these women being harassed?”
The Little Sisters of the Poor, an international Catholic religious order that serves the elderly poor, have been involved in lawsuits over the contraception mandate for more than a decade. The mandate, first issued in 2011, requires most employers to include coverage for contraceptives in their health insurance plans.
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 2016 federal ruling that broadened exemptions, which allowed religious groups to opt out of the federal government’s contraceptive mandate.
Diana Thomson, senior counsel at Becket, the religious liberty law firm representing the Little Sisters, told Catholic News Agency that they are expecting the Trump Administration to appeal the ruling. “I assume the Trump administration will appeal also,” she said. “But the Little Sisters’ appeal is already on file.”
“The district court blessed an out-of-control effort by Pennsylvania and New Jersey to attack the Little Sisters and religious liberty,” said Mark Rienzi, president of Becket and lead attorney for the Little Sisters said in a statement.
“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. We will fight as far as we need to fight to protect the Little Sisters’ right to care for the elderly in peace,” Rienzi said.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, which argued that the exemptions unlawfully denied women access to contraceptive coverage guaranteed under the Affordable Care Act.
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