Catholic nuns in New York State will be at the New York Court of Appeals next week to continue their fight against the state’s abortion mandate that forces them to fund abortions in their health care plans.
In Diocese of Albany v. Vullo, a group of Anglican and Catholic nuns, Catholic dioceses, Christian churches and faith-based social ministries sued New York after it mandated they cover abortion in their employee health insurance plans in violation of their religious beliefs
After state courts left the mandate in place their attorneys asked the Supreme Court to step in. In 2021, the high court reversed the lower courts’ rulings and told them to reconsider the case.
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When the New York State Department of Financial Services initially proposed the abortion mandate, it promised to exempt employers with religious objections. However, after facing pressure from abortion activists, New York radically narrowed the exemption to cover only religious groups that primarily teach religion and primarily serve and hire those who share their faith. This rule does not apply to most religious ministries that seek to serve all people, regardless of faith.
After New York courts refused to stop the mandate, the religious groups asked the Supreme Court to take their case. In 2021, the Court reversed the unfavorable rulings from New York state courts and told them to reconsider in light of Becket’s landmark victory in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. The case is now back before the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. Noel J. Francisco, former U.S. Solicitor General and partner-in-charge at Jones Day’s Washington office, will argue on behalf of the religious groups at the hearing next week.
A decision is expected later this year.
Their attorneys applauded the 2021 Supreme Court decision.
“New York clearly learned nothing from the federal government’s own attempts to force nuns to pay for contraceptives and is now needlessly threatening charities because they believe in the dignity and humanity of every human person,” said Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket. “Punishing faith groups for ministering to their local communities is cruel and counterproductive. We are thankful that the Supreme Court won’t allow the New York Court of Appeals’ bad ruling to be the last word on the right of religious ministries to serve New Yorkers of all faiths.”
New York’s law has only a limited religious exemption—for religious groups that primarily serve and employ people of their own religion. This exemption, which is so narrow that Jesus himself would not qualify for it, excludes the Sisterhood of St. Mary because they sponsor a 4-H club and allow local youth to lease some of their prized Cashmere goats as part of their agricultural outreach ministry.
Other religious groups targeted by the abortion mandate include the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the First Bible Baptist Church of Hilton, New York, and Catholic Charities, the Catholic Church’s charitable arm, which all joined forces against the abortion mandate. What all of these diverse groups have in common is that they seek to serve all people in their communities: the First Bible Baptist Church conducts outreach via its local youth ministry, Catholic Charities provides adoption and maternity services to its community, and the Carmelite Sisters operate the Teresian Nursing Home in Albany. But because they offer these services to people in their communities regardless of their faith background, the state holds that they must offer abortion services in their insurance plans—or else.
“We believe that every person is made in the image of God,” said Mother Miriam of the Sisterhood of Saint Mary, the oldest Anglican religious order founded in America. “That’s why we believe in the sanctity of human life, and why we seek to serve those of all faiths—or no faith at all—in our community. We’re grateful that the Supreme Court has taken action in our case and hopeful that, this time around, the New York Court of Appeals will preserve our ability to serve and encourage our neighbors.”
“We are gratified and grateful that the Supreme Court has recognized the serious constitutional concerns over New York State’s heavy-handed abortion mandate on religious employers,” said The Most Rev. Edward B. Scharfenberger, bishop of the Diocese of Albany, New York. “We are confident that now that the Court has ordered the case remanded for reconsideration in light of last year’s Fulton v. Philadelphia decision, the unconstitutional regulatory action taken by New York State will ultimately be completely overturned as incompatible with our country’s First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty.”
The position puts Christian charities in an “intolerable position”; the state is forcing them to choose between paying for the killing of unborn babies in abortions or giving up their ministries that help people in need, lawyers for the Christian groups argued. Funding the killing of unborn babies in abortions for these and other reasons is “a grave moral evil,” and Christian employers should not be forced to pay for them, they continued.
Without relief, the charities and churches said they will be forced to either stop providing health insurance to their employees or close.
The charities and churches involved in the case include the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Albany and Ogdensburg; the Anglican Sisterhood of St. Mary; the Brooklyn, Albany, and Ogdensburg chapters of Catholic Charities; St. Gregory The Great Catholic Church Society of Amherst; First Bible Baptist Church; Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Albany; the Carmelite charity Teresian House Nursing Home Company; and the Catholic senior living nonprofit Depaul Housing Management Corporation.
