Washington Post editorial board backs Dominican sisters in religious liberty fight with New York over LGBT mandate
The board accused New York of “legal harassment,” arguing that state officials are pressuring the sisters to accept the state’s “gender identity” rules despite no complaints from residents at their nursing home.
The Washington Post editorial board sided with a Catholic congregation of Dominican sisters suing New York over a state law requiring long-term care facilities to follow “gender identity” rules the sisters say violate their religious beliefs.
In a June 28 opinion piece, the board highlighted the work of the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who operate Rosary Hill Home, a 42-bed nursing facility in Hawthorne, New York, that provides free palliative care to patients with incurable cancer.
The sisters do not accept government funding or insurance and say their mission is to care for the dying poor as part of the “healing ministry of Christ.”
“What a simple and beautiful mission,” the newspaper’s board wrote of the sisters. “But it’s not good enough for bureaucrats in Albany.”
According to the Post, the sisters have received three letters from the New York State Department of Health warning that they were not complying with provisions of New York’s 2023 “Bill of Rights for LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers,” signed by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.
The law directs long-term care facilities to assign rooms and allow restroom access according to residents’ “gender identity,” require staff to use residents’ preferred pronouns, and post notices affirming compliance. It also requires facilities to conduct “cultural competency” training aimed at making long-term care settings more “welcoming to residents with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.”
After the sisters’ request for a religious exemption went unanswered, they filed a federal lawsuit in April against the state, arguing that complying with the requirements would force them to affirm beliefs about sex and gender that conflict with Catholic teaching, Zeale News reported.
The Justice Department notified the court June 18 that it intended to intervene in the case on behalf of the sisters, arguing that New York’s law violates constitutional protections.
>> DOJ intervenes in Dominican Sisters' challenge to New York gender identity law <<
The editorial board said the state law allows exemptions for “professionally reasonable clinical judgment” but does not provide a similar exemption for religious objections.
“This episode is another example of lawmakers searching for villains where there are none,” they wrote. “Hochul said her law is meant to ensure ‘hate will never have a place in New York.’ But what does she think is hateful about these sisters?”
The board also noted that Rosary Hill has not faced complaints from patients over the issue, according to the lawsuit, and that no patient has asked the sisters to use “preferred pronouns.” The facility has also not been sanctioned by the state in the past five years, the editorial said.
The board argued that New York is targeting a religious community without evidence of harm, comparing the case to the Little Sisters of the Poor’s long-running legal fight over the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate.
“What, then, is the point of all this legal harassment? The answer, as ever, seems to be politically motivated virtue signaling,” the board wrote. “The letters from the state read like an effort to bully anyone who doesn’t accept the culture’s prevailing orthodoxies on sexuality.”
The piece concluded that it would “be better for everyone if the state spared itself inevitable embarrassment in court and let these sisters care for the dying poor in peace.”
