“I have adopted the federal government, but I have never sued any affiliation of nuns,” Becerra said. “And my actions have always been directed at the federal agencies.”
Facts first: It needs context. Becerra, along with several other state attorneys general, did not initially file a lawsuit against a group of nuns, but did sue the federal government over a rule aimed at exempting groups such as the Little Sisters of the Poor from the 2011 mandate in which employers are required to cover contraceptives for their employees. The nuns were later allowed to join the federal government as defendants in the case.
In 2017, the Trump administration expanded exemptions for the Obama-era mandate that requires employers to provide health care plans that cover contraceptives. Under the new rule, employers who had moral or religious objections to contraception were exempted from the mandate.
A lawsuit against the new rule was filed in 2017 by California, which was later joined by four more states.
The Little Sisters of the Poor – who have been fighting the original contraceptive mandate for several years – wanted to intervene. The plaintiffs, who included Becerra, argued that they should not be allowed because the federal government is already acting on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor and similar groups in part by defending their interests.
“California did not name the Little Sisters in the original document; in that respect, they only ‘sued’ the federal government,” Adam White, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Law Institute, told CNN. ‘But the whole point of their lawsuit was to withdraw the rights that the government granted to the Little Sisters and other groups, which California acknowledged by arguing that the Little Sisters’ rights were exactly what the American government in this case. . “
The federal judge allowed the Little Sisters of the Poor to join the case as intrusive defendants because of their strong interest in the case and its outcome.
“As the trials indicate, to be on the other side … of the Little Sisters of the Poor in a lawsuit is to get a PR hit,” said Lawrence Sager, a professor and Alice Jane Drysdale Sheffield, regent president of the University of Texas. law school told CNN. “It’s hard not to think that’s why the group is intervening in these cases.”