New York is forcing a tiny Catholic hospice to choose between its faith and the law, and the sisters have taken the state to federal court. The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne run Rosary Hill Home, a 42-bed free hospice for people dying of cancer who cannot pay. The state now demands they follow gender identity rules that clash with Catholic belief, or face fines, loss of license, and even jail. The sisters are suing under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, arguing the government is coercing religious conscience rather than protecting patients.
The order traces back to Mother Mary Alphonsa Lathrop, who founded the congregation in 1900 and vowed to serve the “cancerous poor.” For more than a century the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have cared for the dying without charging patients, taking insurance, or accepting government funds. That long record of free, faith-driven service frames why many see Albany’s demands as an attack on charity, not regulation.
New York’s new rules require long-term care homes to assign rooms by gender identity, permit opposite-sex bathroom access, use preferred pronouns, provide state-mandated training in gender ideology, and post public compliance notices. Non-compliance triggers escalating fines and criminal penalties, including potential jail time for so-called willful violations. That threat hangs over a small group of women who have spent their lives serving others.
The numbers undercut the state’s apparent urgency. Over a four-year reporting period the state received zero complaints about Rosary Hill Home, while nursing homes statewide logged more than 55,000 complaints. No evidence of harm at Rosary Hill preceded the state’s compliance letters. Yet regulators focused on these nuns first, which raises real questions about motive and fairness.
The law also contains a telling inconsistency: facilities run by the Church of Christ, Scientist, enjoy an exemption while Catholic homes do not. The Catholic Benefits Association asked the state for a religious exemption and got no reply before these rules were enforced. With silence from Albany and criminal penalties looming, the sisters had little choice but to go to federal court to protect their conscience and ministry.
“This law imposed on the Dominican Hawthorne Sisters is a form of gender ideology virtue signaling, to require these sisters to be trained in an ideology entirely contrary to Catholic belief. Why are we doing this? We don’t even have such patients. It’s the state requiring these holy nuns to bend the knee to an ideology contrary to their faith.”
That formulation gets to the core Republican concern here: government overreach into religion. When the state uses licensing and criminal penalties to compel doctrinal conformity, it moves from regulation into coercion. Protecting vulnerable residents matters, but forcing a faith-based provider to adopt beliefs it sees as heretical is a constitutional problem.
The operational demands the state lists would reshape hospice life. The order would have to assign rooms and bathroom access based on gender identity, tolerate opposite-sex access in private spaces, adopt preferred pronouns, require staff training in state-defined gender ideology, and post notices of compliance. One state letter even said the home could not restrict intimate relations unless restrictions were applied uniformly, a directive that clashes with a religious end-of-life ministry’s core practices.
“We are consecrated religious Sisters and have one mission. It is to provide comfort and skilled care to persons dying of cancer who cannot afford nursing care. We do not take insurance or government funds or money from our patients or families. The care is totally free. We do this without discriminating on the basis of race, religion, or sex. We do it because Jesus taught us that, when the least among us are sick, we should care for them, as if they were Christ himself.”
Those words explain why the sisters believe the state is asking them to betray their calling. The community is small: about 44 women total and roughly 14 who work directly at Rosary Hill, supported by a few lay aides. Telling these women to reorganize their entire ministry around state anthropology under threat of fines and jail looks less like regulation and more like an attempt to erase a religious model of care.
Court precedent matters because this is not an isolated fight. Religious groups have previously resisted government mandates that force them to act against conscience, and courts have at times pushed back. The sisters argue that treating one faith differently from another, and compelling belief adoption, violates both the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses.
“When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.” — Isaiah 43:2
“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.”
What the sisters seek is narrow and straightforward: the freedom to continue serving the dying poor in accordance with their faith. If the state insists on using its regulatory power as a cudgel to impose a single anthropology on every provider, faith-based charity in New York will face a stark choice. The outcome will determine whether religious institutions can keep doing what government often cannot do well: care for the most vulnerable with devotion and conscience intact.
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