Senior fellow of The Catholic Association urges the left to stop suing nuns as Catholic sisters fight government mandates

Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow with The Catholic Association, called on Democratic officials to “leave the nuns alone” in a July 11 pointed column criticizing legal efforts to subject Catholic religious orders that care for the elderly and sick to government mandates that conflict with their beliefs. 

Writing for The Catholic Association’s Substack in a column titled “Politicians: Find Something Better to Do than Fight the Nuns Serving the Vulnerable,” McGuire highlighted ongoing legal battles involving the Little Sisters of the Poor, who care for the poor and elderly, and the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who provide free care to terminally ill patients at Rosary Hill Home in New York. 

The Little Sisters returned to court July 7, when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments over federal religious and moral exemptions from the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate, as Zeale News previously reported. Pennsylvania and New Jersey are challenging the exemptions, which the first Trump administration issued in 2017. 

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The dispute has continued for more than a decade. In 2020, the Supreme Court upheld the federal government’s authority to create the exemptions. Pennsylvania and New Jersey continued their challenge, however, arguing that the first Trump administration failed to provide adequate justification for the rules when it issued them. A federal district court sided with the states in August 2025, prompting the Little Sisters’ latest move to appeal.

McGuire criticized Democratic officials involved in the litigation, singling out Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who challenged the exemptions while serving as the state’s attorney general, and former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who pursued a separate challenge to the rules.

“It’s…weird? It’s creepy and weird and is also a part of a broader trend of mistreatment of women religious in our post-Christian culture,” McGuire wrote.

An attorney representing the Little Sisters, Adèle Keim, recently discussed the case on McGuire’s “Conversations with Consequences” podcast and said the prolonged litigation has not distracted the sisters from their vocation. 

“Their life’s work is serving and caring for the meekest of people,” Keim said. “They’re not the type that are wanting to go swinging fists into the courts. How has this affected their outlook on things? The sisters’ eyes are on heaven. On truly eternal things. They are walking forward, day by day.”

She added that when “you’re shaped day in and day out by the practice of being a caregiver — you just have this sense that God is in control and that he cares for the sparrow and that not a hair falls from the head of the residents in their homes [without His knowing it].” 

The sisters “just keep walking forward with [their] eyes on Him,” Keim said. “That’s what I see and what I experience when I’m alongside them or visiting their homes.”

McGuire also highlighted a separate federal lawsuit filed by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne against New York officials, who are currently facing pressure from New York to follow a state law that they say would force them to violate their religious beliefs. The law requires long-term care facilities to use patients’ preferred pronouns and give out room assignments and allow restroom access based on residents’ “gender identities.”

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The Dominican sisters filed their lawsuit April 6 after the New York State Department of Health repeatedly informed them that Rosary Hill Home must comply with the law. The Justice Department joined the sisters’ challenge in June, alleging that New York had violated their First Amendment rights. 

McGuire also cited the Los Angeles Dodgers’ decision in 2023 to give a “Community Hero Award” to the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” a drag group whose members dress in clothing modeled on Catholic religious habits, as another example of what she described as cultural hostility toward women religious.

“Who can ever forget the mockery of nuns at the L.A. Dodgers’ game, which, as a part of a pride night, showcased men dressed in drag who go by the ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’ and who describe themselves as ‘an order of queer and trans nuns?’” McGuire wrote.

She concluded with a direct appeal: “Leave the nuns alone and let them serve.”