NY archbishop, archdiocese, healthcare ministry join in suit over state’s assisted suicide law
New York Archbishop Ronald A. Hicks, the Archdiocese of New York and ArchCare have joined a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s Medical Aid in Dying Act. The plaintiffs seek temporary legal protection for ArchCare and other Catholic providers, similar to an order already protecting religious communities and ministries in the case. New York’s law, which took effect Aug. 5, permits terminally ill residents with less than six months to live to obtain aid-in-dying medication. The lawsuit argues that requiring Catholic caregivers to participate in assisted suicide would conflict with their religious beliefs and duty to care for patients.
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New York Archbishop Ronald A. Hicks, the Archdiocese of New York and Catholic healthcare ministry ArchCare have joined a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s Medical Aid in Dying Act. The plaintiffs argue that the law’s requirements conflict with their religious beliefs and healthcare mission; Hicks and ArchCare are seeking court protection from having to comply.
Filed Oct. 29 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, the case—Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm v. Letitia James—names New York Attorney General Letitia James as defendant. Becket, a religious-liberty law firm, is representing the Catholic plaintiffs.
The state’s Medical Aid in Dying Act took effect Aug. 5 and applies to terminally ill New Yorkers with less than six months to live. State guidance says a person can withdraw a request, decide not to take the medication, or otherwise change their mind at any time.
The amended complaint says the religious orders and ministries—among them the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict and Little Sisters of the Poor—have served New Yorkers for more than a century, guided by a belief in life as a sacred gift and a duty to care for patients.
The plaintiffs contend that the law requires caregivers to proactively inform and counsel patients about assisted suicide, which they say goes beyond requirements in California, Oregon and Washington. Hicks said the church organizations would not allow the state to force them to harm those they are called to care for; Becket attorney Adèle Keim said assisted suicide is incompatible with the ministries’ compassionate care.
A temporary restraining order already protects the nuns and other ministries involved in the case. Hicks is seeking similar protection for ArchCare and other Catholic providers. The article also notes that most Catholic health workers in Illinois are covered by a temporary restraining order against that state’s assisted-suicide law, which took effect Sept. 12.
Religious liberty and Catholic healthcare ethics in end-of-life care
Catholic teaching holds together two commitments in end-of-life care: the patient must be treated with dignity and compassion, and Catholic caregivers and institutions must not intentionally cause death or cooperate in euthanasia or assisted suicide. Religious liberty matters because it protects the ability to act consistently with that moral commitment—not merely as a private preference, but as a contribution to the common good. At the same time, Catholic ethics does not require every possible treatment to be continued: proportionate care, relief of pain, and support for patients and families are essential.
For a Catholic healthcare institution, religious liberty is bound up with its ability to carry out its mission in practice. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith describes these institutions as witnesses to ethical and human values rooted in their Catholic identity. It warns that conduct inconsistent with their purpose can undermine whether they can genuinely be identified as Catholic.
This is more than a claim to an exemption from a rule. The CDF presents conscientious objection as a matter of justice and the common good:
The right to conscientious objection does not mean that Christians reject these laws in virtue of private religious conviction, but by reason of an inalienable right essential to the common good of the whole society.
The underlying argument is that healthcare should not treat vulnerable people as burdens whose deaths may be deliberately arranged to end suffering. Catholic institutions instead understand their service as care for the whole person, including when cure is no longer possible. The US bishops’ directives say that a Catholic healthcare institution should be a community of respect, love, and support for patients and families facing death.
The supplied scholarly discussion raises a related public debate: religious-liberty claims may be disadvantaged when public policy frames the conflict as one between religious conscience and equal access to social benefits. That is an analysis of how such disputes can be framed, not a statement of Catholic doctrine or a resolution of any particular legal case. The supplied materials do not establish how a specific court or law should decide a current dispute over end-of-life services.
Catholic teaching rejects euthanasia and assisted suicide. The bishops’ directives define euthanasia as an action or omission that, by itself or by intention, causes death to alleviate suffering; Catholic institutions may not condone or participate in it. They must continue to provide loving care, appropriate treatment for pain and other symptoms, and psychological and spiritual support.
That prohibition does not mean that death must be postponed by every available medical intervention. The directives state that patients may refuse life-prolonging procedures when they are insufficiently beneficial or excessively burdensome. They distinguish such a decision from withdrawing treatment with the intention of causing death. In other words, the moral question is not simply whether a treatment is stopped, but what is being chosen: refusing an excessively burdensome intervention may accept that death is approaching, whereas euthanasia intends death as a means of ending suffering.
The patient’s judgment matters. A competent adult’s free and informed decision about using or withdrawing life-sustaining procedures should be respected and normally followed, unless it conflicts with Catholic moral teaching. A patient or surrogate should also have access to medical and moral information and counseling to form a conscience. Thus, Catholic institutional ethics is not a demand to disregard patients’ choices; it sets moral limits on which choices the institution can carry out.
Rejecting euthanasia does not mean abandoning someone who asks for it. Catholic directives say that a dying patient who requests euthanasia should receive attentive care, psychological and spiritual support, and appropriate relief of pain and other symptoms, so the person can live with dignity until natural death. The Church’s position is therefore not “suffer without help,” but “relieve suffering without making death the intended remedy.”
Pain medication may be used even if it could indirectly shorten life, provided the purpose is pain relief, not hastening death. Patients should be kept as free of pain as possible, while not being deprived of consciousness without a compelling reason, so they may prepare for death if they wish. This distinction is often described as the distinction between intended and foreseen effects: a possible shortening of life is morally different from choosing death as the goal or means of treatment. The directives support that distinction in this context, although the supplied material does not address every clinical scenario or define every form of palliative sedation.
The same balance applies to nutrition and hydration. The bishops’ directives say these forms of basic care should in principle be provided when needed, including to patients diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state, while recognizing that they may not be morally obligatory in certain cases. Their provision must be considered in light of the patient’s condition and the principles of ordinary and proportionate care.
Catholic institutions may inform patients about their rights under state law to make advance directives. But the directives say an institution should not honor a provision contrary to Catholic teaching and should explain why it cannot do so. This makes communication important: a patient or surrogate should not be left to discover only at a crisis point that a requested intervention cannot be provided.
The CDF also draws a boundary around institutional cooperation. It says collaboration with another hospital system is not morally permissible when it involves referrals for patients requesting euthanasia. This is a specific teaching about referrals for euthanasia; it should not be enlarged into a claim that Catholic institutions must refuse all cooperation with other providers or all transfers of patients. The moral assessment depends on what the cooperation involves.
Religious liberty in this setting concerns whether Catholic healthcare can remain faithful to its defining moral commitments while serving patients within a pluralistic society. Catholic end-of-life ethics, in turn, requires both refusal to intend or assist death and active care for the dying: pain relief, proportionate treatment, accompaniment, and respect for the patient’s informed decisions where they do not contradict Catholic principles.
The available sources articulate these moral and institutional principles, but they do not settle every question of civil law, state-by-state requirements, or the clinical details of an individual case. Those applications require the relevant law and medical facts as well as Catholic moral analysis.