Dominicans who care for poor cancer patients sue over state’s transgender mandates
The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have filed a lawsuit against New York state regarding new healthcare mandates. The legal challenge targets state regulations that require long-term care facilities to use preferred pronouns and assign rooms based on gender identity. The religious order operates a nursing home that provides palliative care for poor cancer patients and argues the mandates conflict with their mission and beliefs.
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The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who run the Rosary Hill Home—a 42‑bed nursing facility that provides palliative care to poor cancer patients in New York—filed a federal lawsuit on April 6, 2026 challenging a 2024 New York law that requires long‑term care homes to use residents’ preferred pronouns and assign rooms based on gender identity. The sisters argue the mandate violates their First‑Amendment free‑exercise rights, the Equal‑Protection Clause, and core Catholic teachings on gender 1.
The complaint was lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Governor Kathy Hochul and officials of the New York State Department of Health. It was prepared by the Idaho firm First & Fourteenth. The sisters contend the law forces them to act against “sincerely held religious beliefs” and lacks a compelling governmental interest, failing strict scrutiny. They warn that non‑compliance could lead to fines, injunctions, loss of licensure, or even imprisonment 1.
The Long‑Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights for LGBTQ+ New Yorkers and People Living with HIV, effective May 28, 2024, obliges nursing homes to:
The Department of Health also issued guidance requiring cultural‑competency training for staff at least once every two years 1.
Rosary Hill Home operates single‑sex rooms and separates floors by sex, reflecting the order’s adherence to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. The sisters cite Catholic doctrine that gender is a God‑gifted, immutable characteristic, asserting that the law compels them to “affirm another religious worldview” 1.
Mother Marie Edward Deutsch, superior general, emphasized the order’s mission to care for the dying poor without discrimination based on race, religion, or sex, and described the state mandates as a direct threat to their existence 1.
If the court upholds the law, the Dominican Sisters could face monetary penalties, injunctions, revocation of their health‑care license, or criminal sanctions. The lawsuit notes an exemption granted to the Church of Christ, Scientist, which is not extended to Catholic entities. A hearing date has not yet been set 1.
The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne trace their origins to 1900, when Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (Mother Mary Alphonsa) founded the Congregation of St. Rose of Lima to serve incurable cancer patients. Mother Alphonsa was declared “Venerable” by the Vatican on March 19, 2024 1.
Assess Catholic Church’s stance on gender‑identity mandates in healthcare
Catholic teaching supports genuine healthcare non-discrimination and equal dignity for every person, while also warning that certain “gender identity” mandates rest on a view of the human person (“gender theory”) that the Church regards as incompatible with Christian anthropology. In the healthcare setting, this produces a clear boundary: Catholics may oppose unjust treatment of persons, but they resist legal/administrative requirements that would effectively deny sexual difference in nature or compel Catholic institutions to adopt practices grounded in gender theory.
The Catechism teaches that the human person’s sexual identity is not a matter of arbitrary choice: “Each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.” It also teaches that being man and being woman are “created … in perfect equality as human persons” and that this dignity is “inalienable” from God the Creator.
So, in Catholic terms, “gender identity” mandates are not assessed first by emotion or culture, but by what they require institutions to say and do about the meaning of being male and female, created in God’s design.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith addresses “gender theory” directly. In Dignitas Infinita, it recalls that human life is a “gift from God” and that desiring “personal self-determination” apart from that truth is “amounts to a concession” to the temptation to “make oneself God.”
Additionally, bishops explicitly note that some “gender theory” claims identity is socially constructed rather than given in nature and willed by God, and that it can be described (citing Pope Francis) as denying “the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman” and envisioning a society without sexual differences.
This matters for healthcare mandates because many proposals do not merely call for respectful treatment; they often require public adoption of a theory about identity and sex, including changes to education, institutional policies, and sometimes clinical practices.
Catholic healthcare is meant to serve those who are marginalized and vulnerable to discrimination. The Ethical and Religious Directives state that Catholic health care should serve and advocate for people “at the margins of our society” who are “particularly vulnerable to discrimination,” and it explicitly includes persons with mental or physical disabilities: they must be treated as “a unique person of incomparable worth,” with the “same right to life and to adequate health care.”
The Directives also explain their moral basis: they reaffirm standards flowing from the dignity of the human person, grounded in natural law “in the light of the revelation Christ has entrusted to his Church.”
So the Church’s stance is not “ignore the vulnerable.” It is: protect the dignity and healthcare rights of vulnerable people, while keeping Catholic moral teaching intact.
A helpful way to see the Church’s concern is the USCCB’s analysis of workplace “gender identity” nondiscrimination law (ENDA). The Church does not claim every nondiscrimination law is unjust. Rather, it argues that ENDA-style frameworks can create specific legal pressures:
Even though ENDA is about employment (not healthcare), the logic is transferable as a matter of Catholic institutional ethics: when civil policy turns moral disagreement into legal discrimination, Catholic institutions face a direct conflict between (a) compassion and equal dignity in treatment, and (b) fidelity to a Christian anthropology.
Given the sources you provided, the most defensible Catholic assessment is principled rather than checklist-like, because the Directives excerpts here do not contain a specific “gender identity in healthcare” section. Still, the Church’s general approach yields these boundaries:
Catholic teaching can reject unjust discrimination while still refusing to endorse an ideology that the Church believes undermines the meaning of the body and the nature of human identity as a gift.
Catholic healthcare’s stance is twofold:
If a “mandate” merely requires respectful treatment, privacy, and fairness, that aligns more naturally with Catholic principles. If a “mandate” instead compels Catholic institutions to deny sexual difference in nature or to operate under gender theory as a governing premise, the Church’s sources support resistance on conscience and institutional identity grounds.