Little Sisters of the Poor and federal government appeal August 2025 ruling invalidating 2017 religious and moral exemptions to contraceptive mandate, extending 14-year battle despite prior Supreme Court victories
Newsroom (16/12/2025 Gaudium Press )The protracted legal saga over federal contraceptive coverage requirements entered a new chapter this week, as the Little Sisters of the Poor, joined by the federal government, filed an appeal seeking to revive broad religious and moral exemptions established in 2017.
The order of Catholic nuns, dedicated to caring for the elderly poor, has twice prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court in disputes stemming from the Affordable Care Act’s mandate requiring employers to include contraceptive coverage in employee health plans. In 2016, the high court directed the government to safeguard religious freedoms for objectors, and in 2020, it affirmed the government’s authority to implement expansive exemptions.
Those 2017 rules permitted employers with sincere religious or moral objections — including to methods considered abortifacient — to entirely exclude contraceptive coverage from their insurance plans, relieving them of any obligation to facilitate such services.
Yet, despite these victories, U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia ruled in August 2025 that the exemptions violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Beetlestone deemed the rulemaking process “arbitrary and capricious,” concluding that federal agencies failed to provide a satisfactory explanation or demonstrate a rational connection between identified issues and the chosen remedies.
“The agencies’ actions in promulgating the rule were arbitrary and capricious — in that they failed to ‘articulate a satisfactory explanation for [their] action[s] including a ‘rational connection between the facts found and the choices made,’” Beetlestone wrote in her opinion.
The challenge originated from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, whose attorneys general pursued claims that the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision left unresolved — specifically, whether the exemptions complied with APA standards.
Attorneys for the Little Sisters, led by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, argue that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals should reverse Beetlestone’s decision and conclude the litigation. They invoke precedents from the 2016 and 2020 Supreme Court rulings, contending that reinstating the original mandate without exemptions would provoke a “constitutional conflict,” as the underlying requirement itself lacks mandatory force.
“The appellee states maintain that state governments somehow have an interest in forcing the federal government to force religious objectors to comply with the federal contraceptive mandate — even though the federal government need not have any contraceptive mandate at all, and even though the states themselves have chosen not to have such mandates of their own,” the appeal brief states.
Mark Rienzi, president and senior counsel at Becket, who serves as lead attorney for the nuns, sharply criticized the ongoing litigation in a statement.
“The 14-year legal crusade against the Little Sisters has been needless, grotesque, and un-American,” Rienzi said. “The states have no business trying to take away the Little Sisters’ federal civil rights. The 3rd Circuit should toss the states’ lawsuit into the dustbin of history and uphold the protection the Little Sisters already won at the Supreme Court … twice.”
The appeal underscores the persistence of the dispute, now in its second decade, highlighting tensions between federal health policy, administrative law, and religious conscience protections. A decision from the Third Circuit could potentially set the stage for yet another Supreme Court review, though the nuns’ representatives express hope for finality at the appellate level.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from CNA
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