Attorneys for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield filed a lawsuit in federal court against a newly amended Illinois statute that they believe would force the hiring of pro-abortion people.

Illinois lawmakers amended the Illinois Human Rights Act last year to include “reproductive health decisions” in a list of characteristics protected from “unlawful discrimination,” defining the term as decisions about abortion, contraception, fertility, sterilization, and assisted reproduction.

The complaint against the policy was filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, whose senior counsel Mark Lippelman said that the United States Constitution “protects the right of religious organizations to choose workers who will advance rather than contradict their religious beliefs.”

“We urge the court to uphold these organizations’ fundamental right to serve their communities consistent with their faith,” Lippelman continued, labeling the amended Illinois Human Rights Act as an effort to make the plaintiffs “bend their knee to the state’s secular view of abortion.”

The lawsuit from the Roman Catholic Church, which was joined by the Pregnancy Care Center of Rockford, cautioned that the law “forbids religious employers from speaking and acting consistent with their mission-critical religious beliefs about reproductive issues like abortion.”

They warned that the law forces employers to ignore their own standards that would have them “refuse to hire employees who make reproductive decisions that violate their religious beliefs.”

“The act requires employers to broadcast all of these requirements in employee handbooks and workplace posters,” the lawsuit noted. “But plaintiffs do not and will not lie to their employees by saying that employees can make sinful reproductive decisions without facing adverse action.”