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The Department of Justice is signing on to a lawsuit filed by Catholic nuns in New York challenging a state law requiring nursing facilities to affirm a patient’s self-professed “gender identity.”
The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have cared for poor terminally ill patients at Rosary Hill Home — free of charge — for more than 120 years. Following the initial lawsuit filed by the sisters back in April, the DOJ notified the U.S. District Court that it plans to intervene in the case.
“States should take notice that they cannot require Americans to abandon their religious beliefs in the name of woke gender ideology,” Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Harmeet K. Dhillon, said in a statement. “For more than a century, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have provided free palliative care to indigent cancer patients in their last days. New York’s law would force these religious women to choose between their faith and their license if they wish to continue serving the dying.”
The law in question is the LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights, enforced by the state’s Department of Health. It requires long-term care facilities to allow gender-dysphoric patients to use their preferred bathroom, requires caretakers to refer to patients by their preferred pronouns, and grants such patients the right to be housed in spaces otherwise reserved for the opposite sex — all based on a patient’s espoused gender identity, regardless of a group’s religious convictions.
Facilities must also post signage, ensuring the group does not discriminate against patients for gender identity, sexual orientation, or HIV status, as well as complete a cultural competency training every two years.
When the sisters filed their suit, the Church of Christ Scientist had received an exemption. No Catholic groups or organizations have been given a similar opt-out exemption.
The DOJ, in its press release, says the New York law violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by forcing religious facilities to meet standards that violate the group’s religious beliefs.
Back in April, the nuns applied for an exemption through the state, but had not heard back. At the time, the Dominican Sisters’ counsel said the state’s silence on the exemption “was especially disappointing because New York’s law provides religious exemption for long-term care facilities affiliated with the Christian Science Church but not for similar Catholic facilities.” This prompted the sisters to file a federal lawsuit.
Failure to comply with the 2024 New York law comes with substantial fees and punishments, including a $2,000 fine upon the first violation, eventually racking up a $10,000 fine and up to one year in prison.
Rosary Hill Home is a 42-bed nursing facility located in Thornwood, New York. The suit described compliance with the law as an “act against central, unchangeable, and architectural teachings of the Catholic faith.”