Christians win BIG: New York caves on forcing nuns and churches to fund abortion after knockout SCOTUS ruling
Christian organizations spent nearly a decade fighting New York's requirement that they pay for abortions. They came out victorious on Friday, thanks in part to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June.
In January 2017, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the Empire State would require employers to not only pay for contraceptive drugs and devices but for "all medically necessary abortion services."
Cuomo, a Catholic, said that the mandate was one of a number of regulatory actions that would "help ensure that whatever happens at the federal level, women in our state will have cost-free access to reproductive health care."
'The state has given up its disgraceful campaign.'
While there was a religious exemption built into the mandate, it was extremely narrow.
As satisfaction of the mandate would violate their deeply held religious beliefs, a coalition of Christian groups ineligible for the exemption — including the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Albany and Ogdensburg, the Anglican Sisterhood of St. Mary, Our Savior's Lutheran Church, and First Bible Baptist Church — sued the State of New York, claiming it violated the First Amendment's free exercise clause and both religion clauses.
After years of legal setbacks, the Christian plaintiffs' fight was renewed in late 2021 when the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a mandate-affirming ruling by the state appellate court and ordered it to reconsider the case in light of its 2021 decision in Fulton v. Philadelphia. In Fulton, the SCOTUS ruled that the City of Philadelphia had violated Catholic Social Services' free exercise of religion by requiring the foster care agency to endorse homosexual couples as foster parents.
Again, the state appellate court considered the case, and again it ruled against the plaintiffs and in favor of the abortion mandate.
The Supreme Court took up the Christian groups' subsequent appeal, and in June 2025, it ordered the Court of Appeals of New York to reconsider the case in light of its June 5 ruling in Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor. In that particular case, the high court unanimously held that by denying the Catholic Charities Bureau a tax exemption that is available for religious entities, Wisconsin had violated the First Amendment.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in the opinion for the court, "When the government distinguishes among religions based on theological differences in their provision of services, it imposes a denominational preference that must satisfy the highest level of judicial scrutiny."
That Supreme Court ruling boded poorly for New York, whose abortion mandate had a similarly narrow and problematic religious exemption.
On Friday, New York agreed to surrender its effort to coerce the Christian plaintiffs into funding abortions.
"For nearly a decade, New York bureaucrats tried to strong-arm nuns into paying for abortions because they serve all those in need," said Lori Windham, senior counsel at Becket and attorney for the plaintiffs, in a statement. "At long last, the state has given up its disgraceful campaign. This victory confirms that the government cannot punish religious ministries for living out their faith by serving everyone."
"The Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that religious groups shouldn't be bullied for staying true to their faith," Windham added.
Per the terms of the settlement with self-identified Catholic Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration, the following entities will now be recognized as religious employers, thereby securing exemptions from the mandate: the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Albany and Ogdensburg and the Catholic Charities thereof; St. Gregory the Great Roman Catholic Church Society of Amherst; First Bible Baptist Church; Our Savior's Lutheran Church of Albany; Teresian House Nursing Home Company, Inc.; Teresian House Housing Corporation; and Depaul Housing Management Corporation.
The Sisterhood of Mary and the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Brooklyn have dropped their free exercise claims against the state.
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