Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania

Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued May 6, 2020 Decided July 8, 2020
Full case name	Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania, et al. Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. Pennsylvania, et al.
Docket nos.	19-431 19-454
Citations	591 U.S. ___ (more) 140 S. Ct. 2367
Case history
Prior	Preliminary injunctions granted, Pennsylvania v. Trump, 281 F. Supp. 3d 553 (E.D. Pa. 2017), 351 F. Supp. 3d 791 (E.D. Pa. 2019) Affirmed sub nom. Pennsylvania v. President United States, 930 F.3d 543 (3d Cir. 2019) Cert. granted, Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter & Paul Home v. Pa., 140 S. Ct. 918 (2020)
Holding
The Departments had the authority under the ACA to promulgate the religious and moral exemptions. The rules promulgating the exemptions are free from procedural defects.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan Neil Gorsuch · Brett Kavanaugh
Case opinions
Majority	Thomas, joined by Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh
Concurrence	Alito, joined by Gorsuch
Concurrence	Kagan (in judgment), joined by Breyer
Dissent	Ginsburg, joined by Sotomayor

Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving ongoing conflicts between the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) over the ACA's contraceptive mandate. The ACA exempts nonprofit religious organizations from complying with the mandate, to which for-profit religious organizations objected.

The case is a result of prior court actions in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.,^[1] in 2014, and Zubik v. Burwell,^[2] in 2016, which left the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to promulgate new regulations on the mandate. President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order to the HHS to bypass the traditional regulatory process, leading HHS to devise new rules in late 2017 to give for-profit groups exemptions for religious or moral objections to the mandate. Several states sued the federal government, and multiple Circuit Courts placed injunctions on the new rules as arbitrary and capricious and required by neither the ACA or the RFRA, violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). This case was a consolidation of two appeals from the injunction placed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The Supreme Court ruled on July 8, 2020, in a 7–2 decision that the new rules were valid, as the associated departments had the authority to promulgate the exemptions, and that the process to put the rules in place did not violate the APA.