The Little Sisters of the Poor spent seven years fighting the federal government to avoid handing out birth control pills.
Now Illinois wants to make them hand out suicide pills instead.
What Illinois is now forcing these sisters to say to dying patients inside their own care homes – under threat of government fines – would have been unthinkable in any other era of American law.
Illinois Is Fining the Little Sisters of the Poor for Refusing to Push Physician-Assisted Suicide
Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, joined two orders of Catholic nuns and a local pharmacist in a federal lawsuit filed September 3 to block the End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act before it takes effect September 12.
Pritzker signed the law in December 2025.
The law doesn't just permit assisted suicide. It conscripts religious caregivers into the process whether they want to be or not.
The Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm and the Little Sisters of the Poor – women who have dedicated their lives to caring for the elderly and dying – must now inform every qualifying patient that death by prescription is an option. They must walk patients through eligibility requirements and must hand them off to a provider willing to write the lethal prescription.
Refuse, and Illinois hits them with fines.
Then it gets worse.
The law also slaps a gag order on the sisters – they are legally prohibited from speaking any life-affirming message against suicide while caring for their own residents.
"Our vocation is to give witness to them, through everything we do, that their lives remain precious and that they will never be abandoned," said Mother Mary Rose Heery, prioress general of the Carmelite Sisters. "Illinois cannot ask us to replace that promise with help ending their lives."
Illinois pharmacist Luke Vander Bleek joined the lawsuit too.
"I became a pharmacist because I wanted to help people heal, never to hasten their deaths," Bleek said. "The state shouldn't force me to choose between serving my neighbors and following my conscience."
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty – the same firm that beat the federal government three times at the Supreme Court defending the Little Sisters of the Poor against the Obamacare contraceptive mandate – is leading the legal fight. Becket's president, Mark Rienzi, is the lead attorney.
Blue States Keep Targeting Religious Freedom and Keep Losing in Court
Illinois isn't improvising. It's following a blueprint.
New York passed its own Medical Aid in Dying Act in February 2025 and faced the exact same legal challenge.
In July 2026, Becket filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of four orders of Catholic nuns against New York. By August 3, a federal judge ordered New York not to enforce its assisted-suicide mandate against the nuns while the lawsuit proceeds.
Illinois watched New York get blocked – and pushed forward anyway.
Democrat Governor JB Pritzker knew New York's religious exemption was the narrowest in the nation when Illinois wrote its own law. He made it narrower.
The lawsuit argues EOLOA violates the Constitution on at least five grounds – compelled speech, free exercise of religion, church autonomy, religious institutional governance, and federal disability law. Becket is asking the court to either carve out full protection for religious providers or invalidate the statute entirely.
A separate lawsuit filed in June by a physician, two disabled patients, and disability rights organizations argued the same point – EOLOA lacks the guardrails needed to stop doctors from steering vulnerable people toward death instead of treatment.
Catholic healthcare ministries have served Chicago's sick, elderly, and dying for nearly 175 years. Illinois is now telling the women who run those ministries that their 175-year promise to the dying belongs to the state now.
Becket's Rienzi didn't mince words: "The state should stop trying to make Catholic nuns help patients kill themselves."
J.B. Pritzker is counting on these sisters to fold.
He has never met the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Sources:
- Spencer Lombardo, "Catholic Nuns Sue Illinois Over Law Forcing Them To Help Terminally Ill Patients Kill Themselves," The Daily Caller, September 5, 2026.
- Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, "Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm v. Prince," Press Release, September 3, 2026.
- Ed Morrissey, "New Catholic Nuns, Cardinal Sue Illinois Over Assisted Suicide Mandate," Hot Air, September 4, 2026.
- Shawn Fleetwood, "Catholic Nuns Take On New York's Coercive Physician-Assisted Suicide Law in Court," The Federalist, July 28, 2026.
- "Notre Dame Awards Religious Liberty Prize to Becket Fund for Supreme Court Wins," EWTN News, July 10, 2026.
