A community of Catholic sisters in New York has gone to federal court after the state imposed a transgender mandate which would force them to violate their faith while caring for the dying poor. The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who have spent more than a century serving terminal cancer patients at Rosary Hill Home, filed suit against state officials after New York required long-term care facilities to comply with rules tied to its “Bill of Rights for Long-Term Care Facility Residents who are LGBT or Living with HIV.”
According to the lawsuit, the mandate goes far beyond ordinary anti-discrimination protections. The sisters say New York is requiring them to use patients’ preferred pronouns, assign rooms based on gender identity rather than biological sex, allow access to opposite-sex bathrooms, and ensure staff undergo “cultural competency” training built around gender ideology. The complaint argues that failure to comply could expose the order to fines, court action, licensing consequences, and even jail time.
The case, The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne v. Hochul, was filed after the sisters sought a religious exemption and say they received no answer from the state. Their legal team argues that New York is violating the sisters’ First Amendment rights by compelling speech and burdening the free exercise of religion. The sisters also point to unequal treatment under the law: New York’s policy provides a religious exemption for facilities connected to the Christian Science Church, but not for comparable Catholic ministries.
Mother Marie Edward, the order’s superior, said the sisters have long served patients from every background and have never refused care, but cannot implement the mandate without betraying Catholic teaching. Rosary Hill Home provides palliative care free of charge and survives through the sisters’ labor and charitable support, making the state’s demands especially striking given the ministry’s long record of serving the vulnerable.
This case is about whether a state can compel Catholic women caring for the dying to speak and act against their faith. If New York can do this to nuns running a hospice, no religious institution should assume it will be spared next.
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