Benedictine sisters join Dominicans’ challenge to New York’s gender ideology mandate for care facilities

The Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict and St. Joseph’s Home for the Aged, the Catholic assisted-living facility they operate, have joined a federal lawsuit challenging New York gender ideology rules for long-term care facilities that the sisters say would force them to violate their religious beliefs.

The lawsuit — filed in April by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne against Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and other state officials — seeks relief from a law directing long-term care facilities to assign rooms and allow restroom access based on residents’ “gender identity,” require staff to use residents’ preferred pronouns, and accommodate residents’ extramarital sexual activity. 

The law also requires facilities to conduct “cultural competency training” designed to make them more “welcoming to residents with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.”

According to a Catholic Benefits Association press release emailed to Zeale News, the Benedictine sisters operate a 60-bed assisted living facility in Huntington, New York, and argue that compliance with the state’s requirements would violate Catholic teaching on sexuality, marriage, and the human person. 

The release said the Benedictine sisters have cared for elderly and infirm residents at the home for more than 50 years and do not accept government funding.

“I fully support the Sisters’ decision to seek relief from New York’s gender ideology mandate being imposed on nursing homes and adult care facilities,” Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, said in the release. “Sometimes Catholics need to take a stand for their Catholic values, and the Benedictine Sisters are doing that.”

The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne initially filed the case April 6 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The order operates Rosary Hill Home, a skilled nursing facility that provides free palliative care to low-income patients with incurable cancer.

The Department of Justice notified the court June 18 that it intended to intervene on the Dominican Sisters’ behalf after Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche determined that the lawsuit was “a case of general public importance.” 

Andrew Nussbaum, an attorney for the Benedictine sisters, said New York allows facilities to depart from some requirements based on secular clinical judgments while refusing to grant comparable accommodations for religiously informed clinical judgments.