An order of Catholic nuns who care for the terminally ill poor has sued to block a New York transgender-rights law that requires nursing homes to use pronouns, assign rooms and allow restroom access based on a patient’s gender identity, or risk jail time.
The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, a 125-year-old nonprofit institution that runs the Rosary Hill Home, on Tuesday filed a lawsuit accusing the state of violating the religious group’s constitutional rights with the LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of 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 2024 law enforced by the New York State Department of Health directs nursing homes to house patients and allow them access to restrooms in accord with their gender identity, even if their roommates object, and refer to them by their preferred pronouns whether or not they are present.
The department’s training materials require facilities to “create communities” that affirm patients’ sexual preferences and “accommodate patients’ desire for extramarital relations,” unless such conduct is banned across the board, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Long-term nursing facilities must also post a notice assuring the public that they do not discriminate based on “actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or HIV status,” and ensure staffers take “cultural competency training” every two years, or face significant penalties.
They include fines of up to $2,000 for the first violation and up to $5,000 for repeat violations. Those engaging in “willful violations” of public health law are punishable by fines of up to $10,000 or one year in prison, or both.
“A willful violation is a knowing one; there is no element of evil motive required,” the lawsuit states.
Requiring Rosary Hill Home, a 42-bed skilled nursing facility that cares for indigent cancer patients in their final days free of charge, to treat male patients as females would force the nuns to “act against central, unchangeable, and architectural teachings of the Catholic faith,” the lawsuit states.
“The implications are so much greater than whether to utter the words ’he’ or ’she,’” the lawsuit states. “Indeed, to demand that a Catholic deny another’s sex is to require him or her to affirm another religious worldview.”
The Catholic Benefits Association, which is assisting the Hawthorne Dominicans, said it sent a request to the state March 5 seeking a religious exemption for the organization but has not received a response.
The association noted that the law provides a religious exemption for long-term care facilities operated by the Church of Christ, Scientist, but not those run by Catholics or other religious denominations.
The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, founded by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, daughter of famed American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, says that while it cannot cure its patients, “we can assure the dignity and value of their final days and keep them comfortable and free of pain.”
The order and its affiliate, the Servants for Relief of Incurable Cancer, are seeking an injunction against the state law for allegedly violating the First and 14th Amendments.
The 2024 legislation, sponsored by Democratic state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, was backed by groups including Service and Advocacy for LGBT Elders, Equality New York and New Pride Agenda.
“While acceptance of LGBTQ individuals has grown in recent years, too often the clock winds back for LGBTQ elders entering long-term care,” Mr. Hoylman-Sigal told Gay City News in June 2023. “Eighty percent of LGBTQ adults in long-term care facilities hide their orientation when they move into a facility out of fear of discrimination. Our bill works to reverse this trend.”
The bill cited a 2011 study that found 78% of LGBTQ seniors “felt they could not be open with the staff of a long-term care facility about their sexual orientation or gender identity,” and that “a majority of all respondents identified discrimination by staff (89%).”
