Washington, DC, Dec. 19, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The New Civil Liberties Alliance filed an amicus curiae brief in Pennsylvania v. Trump today at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. NCLA urges the Third Circuit to dismiss Pennsylvania and New Jersey’s lawsuit challenging certain religious exemptions to the contraceptive mandate that the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) imposed under the Affordable Care Act. As NCLA has indicated in prior amicus briefs siding with the Little Sisters of the Poor, Congress did not impose this mandate on the nuns, and the federal agencies implementing the Affordable Care Act cannot do so on their own accord. The States’ lawsuit seeks to violate the nondelegation doctrine by empowering agencies to legislate.
The statute mandates that employers with more than 50 employees provide coverage including “preventive care and screenings” for women, without defining what constitutes “preventive care.” This left HRSA to define and mandate “preventive care,” exercising legislative power that the Constitution prohibits Congress from giving away. The district court in this case struck down the Trump Administration Department of Health and Human Services’ expanded religious and moral exemptions to HRSA’s earlier contraception coverage mandate. This would force the Little Sisters of the Poor to fund contraception coverage against their deeply held beliefs.
The district court’s decision reached the same result that court handed down in 2017 in this same case when it blocked the expanded religious exemption to the contraception mandate on different grounds. But the Supreme Court reversed that ruling in 2020, restoring the exemption but also suggesting that the ACA provision delegated too much policy-setting power to HRSA. As NCLA’s brief points out, the ACA provision does not establish a congressional policy for what “additional” goods and services group health plans should be required to cover, nor any intelligible principle to guide HHS in making law on this matter. Delegating such legislative power to an administrative agency violates the nondelegation doctrine. When an agency uses that power to impose a policy like the contraception coverage mandate, this violates the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. The Third Circuit should dismiss Pennsylvania and New Jersey’s lawsuit as unable to be redressed.
NCLA released the following statements:
“When Congress fails to provide an agency with statutory direction for its regulations, it can needlessly embroil people like the Little Sisters of the Poor in a decade of litigation from malign government actors.”
— John Vecchione, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA
“The broad contraceptive mandate—imposed by HHS, not Congress—cannot withstand First Amendment scrutiny if HHS’s exemption for sincere religious believers is struck down. Yet the district court set aside the current religious exemption, even after the Supreme Court upheld it in 2020. The Court of Appeals should reverse the district court and dismiss the states’ suit.”
— Andrew Morris, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA
“Despite multiple Supreme Court victories, the Little Sisters once again find themselves fighting a contraception insurance coverage mandate. Enough is enough! Federal agencies cannot legislate where Congress feared to tread, especially when doing so would violate religious liberty. The Third Circuit needs to get this district court in line.”
— Mark Chenoweth, President, NCLA
For more information visit the amicus page here.
ABOUT NCLA
NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLA’s public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans’ fundamental rights.
Joe Martyak New Civil Liberties Alliance 703-403-1111 joe.martyak@ncla.legal
