Illinois says Catholic hospitals won’t have to promote suicide as federal lawsuit plays out

Some Catholic hospitals and several other religious objectors in Illinois will not have to promote the state’s assisted suicide regime while a lawsuit challenging the policy plays out in federal court.

Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki had earlier in August brought the lawsuit against the state in U.S. district court alongside a Lutheran care home and several Christian doctors. The suit argues that the Illinois “End-of-Life Options” law requires doctors to participate in helping patients kill themselves even if the doctors conscientiously object to doing so.

On Aug. 21, the district court said the state would be restrained from enforcing the suicide rules against the objectors while the lawsuit continues through the federal court system. The Thomas More Society, which is representing the plaintiffs in the suit, announced the order in a press release on Aug. 24.

Peter Breen, the head of litigation at the Catholic legal group, described the order as “a critical first victory” for the religious objectors in the case.

Dr. Mary Keen Kirchoff, one of the doctors participating in the suit, said in the press release that the federal order “means I can go back to focusing on caring for my patients instead of wondering whether staying true to who I am is going to cost me my career.”

The doctor said she was “grateful I can keep practicing medicine according to my integrity and my faith without that threat hanging over me,” though she admitted that the arrangement was only “for now.”

In issuing its order, the district court noted that the block on the suicide rules only applies to the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and that the state can otherwise broadly enforce the suicide law.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed the law in December 2025. The measure permits doctors to help “qualified terminally ill patients” kill themselves with lethal doses of medication.

Patients must have the “mental capacity … to make medical decisions” and must be facing death within six months as determined by two physicians.

Pritzker in signing the law claimed the suicide rule “honors [the] strength and courage” of state residents suffering from terminal illnesses. 

This is not the first victory opponents of assisted suicide have won in U.S. courts this year. In July the state of New York agreed to a similar order after a coalition of religious sisters brought suit against the state’s assisted suicide law in federal court.

As in Illinois, the New York agreement applies only to the plaintiffs in that lawsuit and only while the suit itself is litigated in federal court.