For 125 years, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have cared free of charge for indigent cancer patients at Rosary Hill Home. Now they say New York is threatening fines, license revocation, and even jail unless the ministry submits to state gender-identity mandates that violate Catholic teaching.
Catholic nuns who have provided care for terminally ill patients in New York for more than a century have filed a federal lawsuit challenging a state law they say compels them to violate their religious beliefs on sex and gender identity.
The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne operate Rosary Hill Home, a 42-bed facility that offers free care to terminally ill cancer patients nearing the end of life. In a complaint filed April 6 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the sisters allege the state is threatening to close the facility unless they “violate their Catholic faith.”
The lawsuit names New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, D, and officials from the New York State Department of Health as defendants. The Catholic Benefits Association is supporting the sisters’ case.
According to the complaint, the sisters received three “Dear Administrator Letters” from state health officials in March 2024, October 2024, and January 2025 outlining their obligations under New York’s LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights.
The law requires facilities to assign rooms based on a patient’s stated gender identity rather than biological sex, “even over the opposition of the roommate.” It also mandates that staff use patients’ preferred pronouns, including when patients are not present, and to “‘create communities’ affirming patients’ sexual preferences, to accommodate patients’ desire for extramarital relations, and to post notices affirming compliance with these requirements.”
The complaint further states that facilities must ensure staff “undergo ‘cultural competency training’ indoctrinating them in these practices and in gender ideology.”
The lawsuit states that violations of the law could result in fines, license revocation, or even jail time. The sisters argue that the requirements force them to “act against central, unchangeable and architectural teachings of the Catholic faith.”
The complaint further argues that adhering to the law “would contradict the teachings of the Bible concerning God’s creative sovereignty, contradict reason and truth, and betray our sacred obligation not to knowingly harm other persons, particularly the most vulnerable. The implications are so much greater than whether to utter the words ‘he’ or ‘she.’ Indeed, to demand that a Catholic deny another’s sex is to require him or her to affirm another religious worldview.”
In the lawsuit, the sisters emphasized that between Feb. 1, 2022, and Jan. 31, 2026, the New York State Department of Health recorded “zero complaints” from residents of Rosary Hill Home. In contrast, more than 55,000 complaints were made against other nursing homes in the state, with an average of 23 citations per facility over the same period.
Martin Nussbaum of the First & Fourteenth law firm, the legal counsel for the sisters, said that the state is demanding Rosary Hill Home and similar Catholic facilities adhere to the law while providing a religious exemption for long-term care facilities affiliated with the Christian Science Church.
“The Sisters were left with no choice but to file suit in federal court, and the Catholic Benefits Association has helped them do that,” he said.
A spokesperson for the state health department said the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation but added it “is committed to following state law, which provides nursing home residents certain rights protecting against discrimination, including, but not limited to, gender identity or expression.”
The lawsuit also contends the statute includes a narrow exemption for facilities operated by the Church of Christ, Scientist, but not for Catholic or other religious organizations, raising concerns about unequal treatment. Without an exemption, the sisters “face imminent fines and license revocation if they continue their current religious practices,” the complaint states, adding they “have not complied and do not intend to comply. Their injury is therefore immediate.”
The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the mandate unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and to block its enforcement while the case proceeds.
New York’s attack on a Catholic order of nuns marks just the latest Quixotic attack on religious liberty by progressive bureaucrats who want to use state authority to compel Americans to speak, celebrate, affirm, indoctrinate, and live out LGBTQ, abortion, and other secular orthodoxies.
When Thomas Jefferson spoke of a wall of separation between church and state, he did not mean that the government needed to be protected from the church; he meant that the government would never dictate how religious institutions operate.
The state has no business intruding into a church’s internal mission, doctrine, or practices, yet that is exactly what is happening here.
Rosary Hill Home is a wholly church-run, church-funded ministry rooted in the conviction that every human being has dignity because he or she is created by God. That alone should place it beyond the reach of bureaucratic micromanagement.
But that’s not the only reason New York officials are likely to lose this fight. In Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021), the Supreme Court unanimously held that Philadelphia violated the Free Exercise Clause when it refused to contract with Catholic Social Services unless the ministry agreed to certify same-sex couples as foster parents.
Like Philadelphia, the state of New York is demanding compliance with ideological mandates that contradict Catholic teaching, removing the state from neutrality. It is elevating one worldview over another. Secularism is being treated as a kind of state religion, enforced through regulatory power. That is exactly what the First Amendment was designed to prevent.
New York has also recently embraced a so-called “death with dignity” approach through assisted suicide laws that are in direct conflict with Catholic teaching. The sisters offer a different vision of dignity that includes walking with patients through suffering, providing comfort, and honoring life until its natural end without usurping God’s sovereignty.
If faith-based providers are blocked from operating hospice programs because of their beliefs on sex and death, patients will be left with fewer alternatives, especially those seeking end-of-life care based on compassion rather than convenience.
For the nuns, this case is not about denying care to anyone. It is about preserving conscience.
If the state can force nuns to violate their beliefs in a ministry they fully fund and operate, no religious institution is truly safe. What’s at stake here is not just the future of one hospice but the future of religious liberty in America.
When government can pressure Catholic sisters serving the dying to betray conscience, every ministry in America is on notice. Give today to help the Standing for Freedom Center expose coercive state overreach, defend the First Amendment, and equip believers to stand firm when faithfulness comes under fire.
