A group of religious hospitals are asking for the Supreme Court to protect it from a group of lawyers that claim the hospitals are not a part of the church. The cadre of class-action lawyers has been arguing through litigation that several religious hospital networks should not be allowed to provide their employees with church pension plans. The litigation has put the livelihoods of nuns from the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor in jeopardy, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the hospitals—
Advocate Health Care Network in Chicago, St. Peter’s Healthcare System headquartered in New Jersey, and Dignity Health in California. Over the past four years, the group of lawyers has brought nearly 100 lawsuits against various Catholic and Protestant Hospitals around the country, claiming that the non-profit organizations have broken the law by participating in special church pension plans. READ MORE
