An order of Catholic nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, is challenging a ruling by a federal court that requires them to offer employer-sponsored healthcare plans covering contraceptives — despite the nuns winning two cases at the Supreme Court in the decade-long dispute.

The Little Sisters of the Poor have been engaged in a legal battle to secure an exemption from the Affordable Care Act’s “Contraceptive Mandate,” which requires them to pay hefty fines if they refuse to pay for birth control.

The Supreme Court has twice ruled in favor of the nuns. In 2016, the justices said that the government should “arrive at an approach going forward that accommodates the petitioners’ religious beliefs.” And in 2020, the court upheld an exemption to the mandate created by the Trump Administration.

However, Pennsylvania and New Jersey brought a procedural challenge to the exemption, arguing that it violates the Administrative Procedure Act, an issue in the case which the Supreme Court has not yet addressed.

In August, a federal district court judge, Wendy Beetlestone, an appointee of President Obama, issued an injunction, blocking the exemption, finding that it was “arbitrary and capricious” and that the federal government had shown “no adequate justification.”

A conservative legal firm, the Becket Fund, filed the appeal for Little Sisters of the Poor, arguing that if Judge Bettlestone’s ruling is allowed to stand, it will create a “constitutional conflict” because of the Supreme Court’s previous decision that said there should be an exemption.

“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 says.

The president of Becket, Mark Rienzi, said, “The fourteen-year legal crusade against the Little Sisters has been needless, grotesque, and un-American.”

“The States have no business trying to take away the Little Sisters’ federal civil rights. The Third 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,” he added.

Oral arguments before the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit are expected to take place in early 2026.