CHICAGO, IL — The State of Illinois has agreed to a federal court order issued on Friday temporarily enjoining it from enforcing its new assisted suicide law against Catholic hospitals under the authority of the Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki, Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, the Lutheran Care Center, and four Illinois physicians while their federal lawsuit moves forward. Thomas More Society filed a lawsuit on their behalf on August 11, asking a federal court to block the “End of Life Options” Act before it takes effect on September 12.

Now, in an order in Mary Keen Kirchoff, M.D., et al. v. Treto, et al., Illinois officials have agreed to hold off from applying the law to the named plaintiffs and to the Catholic health care ministries in Bishop Paprocki’s diocese for a potentially protracted period of time, while a separate case raising similar issues is resolved on appeal. In the interim, the order spares these doctors and ministries from being forced to facilitate patient suicides in violation of their faith, the Hippocratic Oath, and centuries of medical tradition.

“This 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,” said Dr. Mary Keen Kirchoff. “For months I’ve faced the real possibility that I could lose my license, be fined, or even face criminal charges simply for refusing to promote or refer patients toward death. I’m relieved the State agreed to pause enforcement while the courts weigh in, and I’m grateful I can keep practicing medicine according to my integrity and my faith without that threat hanging over me—for now.”

“Illinois’s new law forces faithful health care providers to cooperate in the state’s suicide promotion scheme, and this agreement protects our clients from this grave assault on their religious beliefs,” said Peter Breen, Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation at Thomas More Society. “No government has the power to tell a bishop what is or isn’t moral or to require doctors to violate their oath to respect and protect human life. This is a critical first victory for these faithful doctors, for Bishop Paprocki’s Catholic hospitals, and for the Lutheran Care Center.”

In the near term, the order means that when the law takes effect on September 12, the named plaintiffs may keep serving their patients according to conscience. Illinois cannot force them to tout the alleged “benefits” of assisted suicide, refer patients to someone willing to prescribe lethal drugs, log those requests in a way that triggers the state’s suicide “qualification” process, avoid engaging in whatever the state decides is “misinformation” about suicide, or falsify death certificates to conceal how a patient died. Nor may the state pursue the penalties the law otherwise threatens for refusing: fines of up to $10,000 per violation, loss of licensure, and criminal prosecution.

“We will not rest until Illinois’s immoral and coercive assisted suicide mandate is struck down for good, and every doctor and health care ministry in the state is free to heal without fear of the State’s deadly agenda,” added Breen.

The order will stay in place until the district court rules on Thomas More Society’s forthcoming motion for a preliminary injunction. That motion will follow a decision in Schroeder v. Treto, a separate Thomas More Society challenge to Illinois’s Health Care Right of Conscience Act now awaiting a ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which raises some of the same questions at issue in this case.

Read the order granting the stipulated motion for temporary restraining order here, entered by U.S. District Judge Franklin U. Valderrama on August 21, 2026, in Mary Keen Kirchoff, M.D., et al. v. Treto, et al.