Little Sisters of the Poor are still fighting ObamaCare— as states force nuns to violate their faith

It’s enraging.

More than a decade after the Obama administration first tried to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to buy contraception including abortifacient drugs for employees, states are still hounding the nuns in court.

At its heart, ObamaCare was a massive welfare program meant to redistribute health-care costs to the middle class.

But it was also a social engineering project aimed at coercing religious organizations and businesses to adopt progressive values.

The Affordable Care Act mandated employers, including nonprofits such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, to pay for contraceptives in their worker-provided health insurance as an “essential health benefit” under the euphemistic category of “preventative and wellness services.”

There was no “religious exemption.”

It’s worth taking a step back and thinking about that term: The very idea that an American citizen should be impelled to ask the state for an “exemption” to practice their faith is an assault on the fundamental idea of liberty.

Imagine having to ask the state for an exemption to exercise your free speech?

What makes the case even more unsettling, of course, is that the state is demanding citizens engage in activity that is explicitly against their faith.

Now, there may well be numerous theological disputes within the Catholic Church.

The use of contraception and abortion aren’t among them.

There is absolutely no question that nuns hold genuine, long-standing religious convictions. And there is no question that liberals want to smash them.

Nevertheless, the Little Sisters spent years in court, working their way up to the Supreme Court and winning protections against the federal government (twice).

In 2017, the Trump administration exempted religious groups like the Little Sisters from the ObamaCare mandate entirely.

The government, however, bolstered with unlimited taxpayer funds, can hunt its prey in perpetuity.

So states such as New Jersey and Pennsylvania began their own lawsuits against the Little Sisters.

This week, in a nationwide ruling, Judge Wendy Beetlestone, chief judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, found that the Trump administration’s expansion of religious exemptions from the contraception mandate was “arbitrary and capricious.”

Religious nonprofit groups and businesses will again have to ask for special accommodations from the Department of Health and Human Services to avoid buying abortifacients.

Even if the Trump administration grants every one of them, one day there will be authoritarians in charge who won’t — and nonprofit employees will still be guaranteed contraception through health plans paid for by employers.

Beetlestone, incidentally, was the same judge who issued a nationwide injunction against the contraception exemption back in 2017, arguing it was “difficult” to think of any rule that “intrudes more into the lives of women.”

The Supreme Court overturned it in 2020 by a 7-2 majority. Because no one has a right to free condoms.

Indeed, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act holds that the state must have a “compelling interest” and use the least restrictive means when burdening religious practice.

Free birth control isn’t a compelling interest.

And fining religious organizations millions of dollars to pressure them into abandoning their beliefs is perhaps the most restrictive means of action, short of throwing nuns in prison.

You’d think attacking a group of nuns who offer end-of-life care for the elderly would be a public relations nightmare for Democrats.

Yet they’ve never really shied away from it. Because the point is to intimidate others.

In many ways, the Little Sisters’ struggle is reminiscent of the travails of Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who refuses to create unique message cakes for gay weddings.

Phillips is now embroiled in his umpteenth court case over his crimes. The message: Dissent from those who practice their faith will be punished.

Take the Catholic Charities adoption agencies, which shuttered in numerous states due to laws and policies compelling them to place children with same-sex couples.

The attacks will continue until the Supreme Court upholds the clear language and intent of the First Amendment and religious liberty.

It’s already punted once: In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a 7-2 Supreme Court decision in favor of Jack Phillips, the court barred the state’s attacks only if state officials openly demeaned their target’s faith — a ruling so narrow as to be largely useless.

But it shouldn’t matter why the state is steamrolling the religious liberty of nuns, or anyone else for that matter.

The problem is that the ObamaCare mandate is authoritarian and unconstitutional.

And the only way to fix that problem is to overturn it.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Twitter @davidharsanyi