Nuns’ Community Sues for Exemption from LGBTQ+ Anti-Discrimination Law
A community of Dominican Sisters who run a nursing facility for those with incurable cancer in New York state, have filed a federal lawsuit against the state on to obtain a religious exemption for a law that requires them to provide appropriate care for transgender patients.
Rosary Hill Home is operated by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne in Hawthorne, N.Y. (Image courtesy of Google Maps)
According to USA Today, the lawsuit brought by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne is “challenging New York on First Amendment grounds.” The law in question is New York’s LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights, which aims to protect seniors in vulnerable populations. Per Gay City News, this law requires health care facilities to both assign rooms and allow individuals to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. The state also requires these facilities to provide support and acceptance for patients’ sexual health, use patients’ chosen names and pronouns, and ensure that other queer patients feel comfortable being open about their sexuality.
The Sisters’ lawsuit alleges that these mandates contradict their religious beliefs by compelling them to “act against central, unchangeable, and architectural teachings of the Catholic faith.” The suit accuses the state of violating the Free Exercise Clause and the First Amendment’s Ministerial Exception and Doctrine of Religious Autonomy as well as the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, all of which protect the free practice of religion or provide freedom from discrimination.
According to the lawsuit, the Sisters applied for a religious exemption upon receiving these mandates from the state. They filed the lawsuit when this request went unanswered. In a press release, the administrator of Rosary Hill, one of the Dominican health care facilities, Sister Stella Mary, OP, said:
“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.’ We intend to continue honoring this sacred obligation but need relief from the court to do so.”
The New York Statement Department of Health released a statement that they are “committed to following state law,” which includes protecting all nursing home residents from discrimination, including on the basis of gender identity and sexuality. They declined to comment about this specific case.
“There are all kinds of studies on the situations of LGBTQ elders, and there is rampant fear — and it’s particularly pronounced around trans elders being forced back into the closet to get care at the end of their lives,” says Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of LGBTQ Catholic group DignityUSA. Duddy-Burke told Gay City News, she says she wants “the sisters at Rosary Hill to respect the law, and use their experience of providing appropriate and respectful care for trans elders to help shape improvements in Catholic teaching and practice.”
Duddy-Burke concludes, “I can’t see,how the majority of people would see this, in any way, consistent with the values of our faith.”
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, wondered how not respecting transgender people’s identities conflicts with the community foundress’ directive to make patients “as comfortable and happy as if their own people had kept them and put them into the very best bedroom.”
“The law was passed to make sure people were treated with dignity and respect,” he said. “Why wouldn’t the nuns want to do that?” he asked. “There’s nothing in the Catholic faith which instructs people about which bathroom they must use,” he added. “And there’s nothing in Catholicism that says that people must be addressed with what are considered gender-appropriate names or pronouns. For years, Catholic nuns often took traditionally male names as part of their religious names. And Catholic priests and brothers many times added the name “Mary” to their religious names.”
—Lynnzee Dick, New Ways Ministry, April 17, 2026
A great riposte to a misguided pronunciamento by the good sisters.
I visited someone from our parish at this hospice once, and it was just as the foundress ordered: they treated this man like family, as if he was in his own bedroom. How can I even consider recommending it now if they do not take people like our youngest, who is nonbinary, should they ever need end of life care? Thank you, New Ways, for standing up for truth, justice and compassion—God’s will for us—once again.
Praying the Sisters reconsider their position, to treat all as Christ-unconditionally, leaving the judging to God.