"Christmas came early" for the Little Sisters of the Poor earlier this week when the Biden administration dropped its controversial contraceptive healthcare mandate, ostensibly ending the nuns' 14-year battle over religious liberty with the federal government, the Catholic News Agency reported.
The Department of Health and Human Services on Monday announced its decision to leave in place Trump-era guidelines that allow employers to opt out of birth control coverage over religious or moral objections. The move let stand an existing rule that permits employers to cite "non-religious moral objections" to the Affordable Care Act's requirement to cover contraception.
"Christmas came a little early this year," the religious liberty law group Becket wrote in a post to X on Monday.
The saga for the nuns began in 2011 when, during the Obama administration, "the federal government told this group of nuns to park their convictions at the entrance of the public square or be on the hook for millions of dollars in fines. For the Sisters, that wasn't much of a choice, so they fought back in court," Becket said in a post.
Becket represented the nuns, who were still being pursued by district courts in California and Pennsylvania, among other states, despite the Supreme Court siding with the nuns in 2016 and 2020.
"Those court battles have been on ice for years due to the new contraceptive mandate rule that the Biden administration kept promising to issue," Becket said in another post, adding that hopefully the Biden administration's decision will be a "final victory for nuns whose sole mission is to care for the elderly dying until God calls them home."
"California and Pennsylvania have no business suing the Little Sisters when presidential administrations of both parties have given religious exemptions to the sisters," the firm added.
"One final thought: Suing nuns is never a good idea," Becket concluded.