Xavier Becerra, President Biden’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, sought to defend himself Wednesday from accusations that he has harassed nuns in court.
During confirmation hearings, Becerra was pressed by Republicans over his efforts as California attorney general to force the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic nuns, to provide contraceptives to employees through a mandate promulgated by the Obama administration. In defending himself, Becerra said that he had not sued nuns.
“Americans have different deeply held beliefs on this particular issue, and I absolutely respect that,” Becerra said in the Senate Finance Committee hearing. “By the way, I have never sued the nuns, any nuns. I have taken on the federal government.”
Becerra’s claim is technically right in that he did not sue the nuns directly.
Yet he did pursue litigation that had the effect of bringing the Little Sisters of the Poor into court, in a case, Little Sisters of the Poor Jeanne Jugan Residence v. California, that the Supreme Court addressed in 2020.
In that instance, Becerra sued not the nuns but the Trump administration for its policy that would allow religiously affiliated groups to opt-out of the Obamacare mandate that insurance plans cover contraception and medication abortion costs. The Little Sisters of the Poor was one of the groups implicated in the suit.
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The lawsuit in question, which began as the State of California v. Health and Human Services et al., was filed in October 2017 against six federal agencies and the March for Life Education and Defense Fund. The Little Sisters of the Poor was not included as a defendant in the case. Rather, attorneys for the organization filed a motion in November 2017 to intervene, a procedure that allows an outside group to join ongoing litigation because it has a vested interest in the outcome of the case.
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Becerra’s abortion record, more generally, has elicited strong opposition from Republicans in the Senate. The Senate finance hearing on Wednesday is the second this week. Becerra testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Tuesday, where he declined to get into specifics about his own policy proposals, instead repeating Biden’s campaign promises.
