A new Marist Poll found that the majority of Americans — by a 20-point margin — believe that the Obama administration has been unfair in its treatment of the Little Sisters of the Poor and other religious employers who object to providing birth control to their employees per the Obamacare HHS mandate.

As the Knights of Columbus, which sponsored the poll, observed:

Unlike many other religious organizations or those organizations whose health plans are “grandfathered” and are “exempt” from providing contraception and abortion-inducing drugs, the Little Sisters and many other religious employers are required by the government to sign a form directing their contractors to deliver such coverage through these religious employers’ own health plan.

About 53% of those surveyed said this process demanded by the Obama administration is “unfair,” while 32% disagreed.

Supreme Knight Carl Anderson is frustrated with the government’s disparity in applying the mandate to employers. “It is not reasonable for the government to demand that some — and only some — religious employers engage in activity that is totally unnecessary to the government’s stated purpose of providing elective and morally problematic drugs to employees,” he stated. “Such action doesn’t just violate the rights of employers like the Little Sisters, it is also at odds with the American people’s understanding of basic fairness, and our long-standing commitment to protecting the deeply-held beliefs of every American — especially when those beliefs are the minority view.”

Mark Rienzi, Senior Counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, agrees. “The Little Sisters should not have to fight their own government to get an exemption it has already given to thousands of other employers, including big companies like Exxon and Pepsi Cola Bottling Company.”

The Supreme Court is now considering the religious freedom case and has twice requested additional filings from both sides. The second set of filings in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sylvia Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. is due on April 20.

In their earlier Supreme Court brief, Sr. Loraine Marie Maguire, Mother Provincial of the Little Sisters of the Poor, explained that Little Sisters cannot be held to the demands of the mandate:

As Little Sisters of the Poor, we offer the neediest elderly of every race and religion a home where they are welcomed as Christ. We perform this loving ministry because of our faith and cannot possibly choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith, and we shouldn’t have to. All we ask is that our rights not be taken away. The government exempts large corporations, small businesses, and other religious ministries from what they are imposing on us — we just want to keep serving the elderly poor as we have always done for 175 years. We look forward to the Supreme Court hearing our case, and pray for God’s protection of our ministry.

The Marist Poll surveyed 1,020 adults within the continental United States via telephone April 8-12, 2016 with a margin of error of +3.1 percentage points.