Catholic Nuns Sue N.Y. over Law Requiring Nursing Homes to Use Preferred Pronouns, Allow Mixed-Sex Bathrooms

Catholic nuns in New York are suing the state over a 2024 law that requires longterm care facilities to cater to a patient’s so-called gender-identity in conversation, rooming assignments, and bathroom use.

The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have dedicated their lives to caring for the terminally ill poor. They’ve cared for patients at Rosary Hill Home for more than 120 years, and they’re arguing this New York law violates their constitutional rights.

“We Sisters have taken care of patients from all walks of life, ideologies, and faiths. We treat each patient with dignity and Christian charity,” Mother Marie Edward, general superior of the Hawthorne Dominicans, said in a statement. “We have never had complaints. We cannot implement New York’s mandate without violating our Catholic faith.”

The law in question — LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights — is enforced by the New York State Department of Health. It creates guidelines for patients with different gender identities and pronouns, including allowing patients to use whatever restroom they prefer, even if their roommates object. Further, caretakers, which at this time includes the nuns at Rosary Hill Home, must always refer to patients using their preferred pronouns, even if the patient is not present.

Training materials from the state health department include directives to “create communities” that affirm patients’ sexual preferences and “accommodate patients’ desire for extramarital relations.”

The law also requires that care facilities post signage, guaranteeing the facility does not discriminate against patients for their “actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or HIV status.” Employees must also complete a “cultural competency training” every two years.

Failure to comply with any of these rules and regulations carries severe fines and penalties. The first violation warrants a $2,000 fine, with all subsequent violations racking up a $5,000 penalty. If a caretaker or facility commits a “willful violation” they may face up to a $10,000 fine and a year in prison.

Rosary Hill Home is a 42-bed nursing facility that treats the impoverished until their final days, free of charge to the patient. The nuns are required to comply with the New York state law, and respect the so-called gender identity of patients. Doing so constitutes an “act against central, unchangeable, and architectural teachings of the Catholic faith,” the lawsuit reads.

“The implications are so much greater than whether to utter the words ‘he’ or ‘she,'” the lawsuit reads. “Indeed, to demand that a Catholic deny another’s sex is to require him or her to affirm another religious worldview.”

Currently, the state law provides an exemption to the Church of Christ, Scientist. The law does not currently include any exemption for Catholic groups or organizations.

The nuns have applied for an exemption with the state, but did not hear back. On April 6, the group filed its lawsuit against the state in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The Dominican Sisters counsel, Martin Nussbaum of the First & Fourteenth, said the state’s silence on the exemption request “was especially disappointing because New York’s law provides religious exemption for long-term care facilities affiliated with the Christian Science Church but not for similar Catholic facilities. The Sisters were left with no choice but to file suit in federal court, and the Catholic Benefits Association has helped them do that.”

The 2024 bill was sponsored by Democratic State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and supported by various pro-LGBT advocacy groups.

The bill explained that 78 percent of seniors felt uncomfortable and unable to share their sexual orientation with longterm care staff, according to a 2011 study.

“Our foundress, Mother Alphonsa Hawthorne, charged us to serve those who are ‘to pass from one life to another’ and to ‘make them as comfortable and happy as if their own people had kept them and put them into the very best bedroom,'” Sister Stella Mary, O.P., Administrator of Rosary Hill Home said in a statement. “We intend to continue honoring this sacred obligation but need relief from the Court to do so.”