Commonwealth Policy Center

For over a century, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have provided dignified care to the terminally ill at a nursing home in New York. Now, a New York state law threatens to force the nuns to violate their deeply held religious convictions and use “preferred pronouns” and accommodate gender identity in bathrooms and rooming assignments.  New York has granted exemptions to other religious groups but denying the same protection to the Dominican Sisters.  No religious organization should be forced to  adopt speech policies that force them to violate their faith. Nor should residents of a nursing home be forced to live in intimate quarters with the opposite sex. Constitutional rights like religious freedom and conscience extend into the marketplace, including nuns with a nursing home ministry.