A federal judge has temporarily blocked Illinois from forcing Catholic nuns, doctors and other religious healthcare providers to facilitate assisted suicide under a new state law, following legal challenges from the Thomas More Society and the Becket religious liberty law firm.
Illinois agreed to two temporary restraining orders exempting Catholic-run hospitals, nursing homes and hospice facilities from provisions of the state’s End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act, the first law of its kind in the Midwest permitting medical aid in dying.
The law had been set to take effect Saturday, one day after the second restraining order was approved. The first order, covering physicians primarily, was granted Aug. 21. Both cases were overseen by U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama, a Trump nominee.
The second order, issued Sept. 11, applies primarily to nuns and other religious caregivers. Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago and a plaintiff in the case, responded to the order by stating the Church’s objection was not about imposing its teachings on others.
“To be clear, the Church’s objection to this statute is not an attempt to impose Catholic teaching on non-Catholics; it is an effort to stop the State from compelling Catholic health care providers to violate their conscience” by helping patients kill themselves, Cupich said.
Becket, one of the firms representing challengers, said a “gag order” provision in the law was written broadly enough that Illinois could punish nuns for saying something as simple as “Don’t kill yourself. Jesus loves you. Your life is precious” to a patient.
The Illinois rulings arrived amid a wider pattern of states backing away from conditions that religious objectors have challenged as unconstitutional. Oregon recently agreed not to condition adoptions on applicants’ willingness to provide gender-transition-related care to children in their custody, more than a year after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals signaled it would likely lose that fight on First Amendment grounds. Vermont similarly dropped gender-related conditions on foster care placements earlier this year to settle two lawsuits.
The Illinois orders are temporary, and the underlying legal challenges to the assisted suicide law have not been resolved. Critics of the law have pointed to Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program, which now accounts for roughly five percent of deaths in that country, as a cautionary example of how such laws can expand well beyond their original scope.
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