#USA #NY – In April 2026, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, known as the Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer, filed a federal lawsuit against New York state officials after the state threatened enforcement actions that could shut down their long-running free palliative care ministry.
The sisters, who had operated Rosary Hill Home, a 42-bed skilled nursing facility, for more than 125 years, provided compassionate, no-cost end-of-life care exclusively to impoverished patients suffering from terminal cancer. Founded in 1900 by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, daughter of novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, the order dedicated itself to seeing Christ in the suffering poor and offered care rooted in Catholic teachings on human dignity and biology.
The dispute centered on New York’s 2024 LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights. State health officials warned the nuns that they risked penalties, including potential closure, for refusing to assign rooms or permit bathroom access based on patients’ stated gender identity rather than biological sex, for declining to use preferred pronouns, and for not posting required notices or conducting staff “cultural competency” training aligned with gender ideology.
The sisters argued that compliance would force them to violate core, unchangeable tenets of their Catholic faith. After requesting a religious exemption similar to one granted to the Christian Science Church and receiving no response, they took legal action, claiming the mandates infringed on their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to freely exercise religion.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court, sought an injunction to block enforcement of the requirements at Rosary Hill Home. Reports indicated that the U.S. Department of Justice later joined the suit in support of the sisters.
Image: Rosary Hill in Hawthorne, New York.
