Illinois legalized doctor-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients in December 2025.
Now a Catholic cardinal and two orders of nuns are suing to stop it.
Illinois could fine nuns and a pharmacist for telling a dying patient their life is precious.
Who Cardinal Cupich and Two Orders of Nuns Are Suing Over Religious Liberty
Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and small-town pharmacist Luke Vander Bleek filed suit against Illinois on September 3.
The case is Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm v. Prince, named for Terry Prince, director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs.
Becket, the religious liberty law firm representing them, wants a federal court to block the law before it takes effect on September 12.
Catholic healthcare ministries have served the sick and dying in Illinois for nearly 175 years.
Governor JB Pritzker is the one who signed the law forcing that to change.
The law has a softer name than the one on this lawsuit: Compassion & Choices, the national assisted-suicide advocacy group that lobbied for it alongside the ACLU of Illinois, calls it "Deb's Law," after one of the group's storytellers, Deb Robertson.
Compassion & Choices is still defending it, and in 2026 it helped beat back several bills in the legislature aimed at restricting or repealing what it built.
What Illinois' Assisted Suicide Law Actually Requires From Objecting Doctors and Nuns
Illinois says healthcare providers can opt out of personally prescribing or administering the lethal drugs.
The lawsuit says that opt-out is close to meaningless.
Providers who object must still inform patients about their "right" to kill themselves, help them qualify for the drugs, and hand them off to someone who will finish the job.
Pharmacist Luke Vander Bleek says his pharmacy would have to fill prescriptions he knows are meant to end a life, or refer the patient to one that will.
"I became a pharmacist because I wanted to help people heal, never to hasten their deaths," Vander Bleek said.
The Words That Could Get a Catholic Nun Fined in Illinois
Illinois defines coercion and undue influence so broadly that the lawsuit says it could punish caregivers for offering comfort instead of assistance in dying.
Telling a suffering patient "Don't kill yourself. Jesus loves you. Your life is precious" could be treated as violating the law.
Mother Mary Rose Heery, the Carmelite Sisters' prioress general, says that message is the sisters' entire vocation.
"Our vocation is to give witness to them, through everything we do, that their lives remain precious and that they will never be abandoned," Heery said.
Illinois wants to replace that promise with a referral to someone willing to help end it.
The Bishop Who Already Beat This Same Law Weeks Earlier
Cupich and the sisters are not the first Illinois Catholics to sue over this law, and they are not fighting alone.
Bishop Thomas Paprocki, a Lutheran nursing home, and four Illinois doctors sued on August 11, weeks before this case.
U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama granted them a temporary restraining order on August 21, blocking fines up to $10,000 per violation, loss of medical licensure, and criminal prosecution while their case proceeds.
One of those doctors, Mary Keen Kirchoff, said she can now focus on patients "instead of wondering whether staying true to who I am is going to cost me my career."
Illinois has already lost this fight once.
The Supreme Court Precedent These Sisters Already Have on Their Side
The Little Sisters of the Poor have done this before.
In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 that the federal government could not force the Little Sisters to provide contraceptive coverage that violated their faith.
Becket represented them then too.
Becket president Mark Rienzi says the pattern with Illinois looks familiar.
"The state should stop trying to make Catholic nuns help patients kill themselves," Rienzi said.
Illinois has 175 years of Catholic care in this state and a Supreme Court precedent working against it, and it has nine days left to explain why that should not matter.
Sources:
- Ryan Colby, "Catholic Cardinal and Nuns Sue Illinois to Stop Forcing Them to Help Patients Kill Themselves," LifeNews.com, September 3, 2026.
- "Cardinal Cupich, Catholic Religious Sisters Sue Illinois to Halt Assisted Suicide Law," Catholic World Report, September 3, 2026.
- "Cardinal Blase Cupich, Chicago Archdiocese, Nuns Challenge Right-to-Die Law," Chicago Sun-Times, September 3, 2026.
- "Illinois Agrees Not to Force Objecting Doctors and Faith-Based Care Homes to Push Suicide, for Now," Thomas More Society, August 2026.
- "History of Our Work in Illinois," Compassion & Choices, 2026.
