Last week, four Orders of Catholic Sisters along with the Catholic Diocese and Bishop of Rockville Centre, New York, filed suit in a New York federal district court challenging, at least as applied to them, the constitutionality of New York's Medical Aid in Dying Act as it interacts with the state's Palliative Care Information Act. Labelling these a "Suicide Counseling Mandate", the 102-page complaint (full text) in Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, Inc. v. James, (ND NY, filed 7/17/2026) alleges in part:
13. The many New York nurse practitioners, doctors, mental health professionals, hospitals, and care homes with religious or moral objections to participating in assisted suicide will have nowhere to go, because New York’s purported “opt-out” is among the narrowest in the nation, and doesn’t apply at all to independent assisted living facilities, including those run by the Benedictine Sisters. The Catholic patients who wish to die without being offered the chance to kill themselves at their lowest moment will be left out in the cold.....
15. First, the First Amendment’s protected sphere of church autonomy requires the government to respect and stay out of matters of governance within religious institutions, such as how the Catholic Church chooses to implement its beliefs on the sanctity of human life and the decision of religious communities to form themselves around those same principles.
16. Second, its protection of the free exercise of religion prohibits the government from burdening the sincere religious beliefs of Plaintiffs and the patients they serve unless the state is furthering an interest of the highest order and using the least restrictive means to do so—an exceedingly high bar Defendants cannot meet.
17. Third, its protections against religious gerrymanders prohibit the government from enacting legal burdens that fall uniquely on religious adherents—such as those who object to providing assisted suicide.
18. Fourth, its protections against compelled speech prevent the government from forcing Catholic doctors and nurses to speak the government’s preferred, supportive message of assisted suicide.
19. And fifth, its protections for freedom of association allow the Catholic Church, its various communities, and the patients they serve, to organize themselves into like-minded communities with the same values and beliefs—the mission of which is to live faithfully according to those beliefs, for however long or short a time....
Becket issued a press release announcing the filing of the lawsuit.