SCOTUS Sides With Nuns Fighting NY Abortion Mandate

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of nuns fighting against New York’s abortion mandate that forced religious organizations to pay for employee abortions.

The Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic organization that serves the elderly, fought the state on its abortion mandate that violates religious liberties for years, but multiple New York courts have ruled in favor of the abortion mandate.

New York mandated in 2017 that employers pay for “not just abortifacients, but even surgical abortions” as part of employee health care. The state had indicated that it would protect religious groups, but “narrowed the exemption to protect only religious entities that primarily employ and serve people of their own faith,” according to Becket Religious Liberty for All. The only religious exemption was for “religious groups that primarily teach religion and primarily serve and hire those who share their faith,” a Becket press release said.

In response Catholic nuns led a group of religious groups spanning different denominations who banded together to push back against the state forcing Christians to provide insurance plans that pay for killing babies as “health care.”

The mandate “violat[ed] their deepest religious convictions about the sanctity of life,” according to Becket. “New York wants to browbeat nuns into paying for abortions for the great crime of serving all those in need,” said Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel of Becket.

In 2021 the religious groups appealed to the Supreme Court, which “granted the petition, vacated the bad rulings from the New York state courts, and told the state courts to reconsider the case,” according to Becket. Instead, New York ignored SCOTUS and codified the mandate into law in 2022. In response, the religious groups again appealed to SCOTUS.

“For the second time in four years, the Supreme Court has made clear that bully tactics like these have no place in our nation or our law. We are confident that these religious groups will finally be able to care for the most vulnerable consistent with their beliefs,” Baxter said.

SCOTUS overturned the lower court’s 2024 ruling in favor of its abortion mandate, and “the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals of New York for further consideration in light of Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission,” where SCOTUS ruled that “Wisconsin violated a Catholic Charity’s First Amendment rights, as The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman reported.

Just before the nuns won their case, SCOTUS decided that the “government cannot use schemes like New York’s to discriminate among religious people,” according to Becket Religious Liberty for All.

“We are confident that New York will finally get the message and stop discriminating against religious objectors,” said Noel J. Francisco of Jones Day, which is also representing the religious groups in the case.