President Joe Biden's pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, California Democratic Attorney General Xavier Beccera, told the Senate on Wednesday that he "never sued any nuns" during his time as attorney general. But is this true?
"By the way, I have never sued the nuns, any nuns," Beccera told Sen. John Thune (R-SD). "I have taken on the federal government, but I have never sued any affiliation of nuns, and my actions have always been directed at the federal agencies because they have been trying to do things that are contrary to the law."
When Beccera slipped and said "the nuns," he was referring to the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of nuns that care for the elderly poor. Following the passage of Obamacare, the nuns fought all the way to the Supreme Court to challenge the Obamacare mandate forcing them and similarly situated religious groups to subsidize contraception and life-ending abortion drugs and devices in violation of their deeply held religious beliefs. The Supreme Court granted the nuns relief, but then Xavier Beccera rushed in to try and strip the nuns of their religious exemption.
The lawsuit was titled the State of California v. Little Sisters of the Poor. Beccera was suing to deprive the nuns of their religious exemption. The Little Sisters were an intervenor-defendant in the suit. The case was all about the nuns.
Becerra certainly wasn't fooling Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE). The senator called out Beccera for his attempt to hide his brazen attack on religious liberty from the Senate.
This is just a devastating exchange for Becerra from @BenSasse.
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) February 24, 2021
Sasse takes apart the mindless defenses of his lawsuits against Little Sisters of the Poor, revealing that in the end.. it was just about bullying nuns and attacking religious liberty. pic.twitter.com/evOd0oyIsJ
RATING: What Xavier Becerra said was false. Do we want a Health and Human Services secretary who hides behind semantics to pull the wool over people's eyes? Becerra is an abortion extremist who sued whoever he needed to in order to deprive nuns of their religious liberty.