The Department of Justice said it intends to join a lawsuit brought by a group of Catholic nuns challenging a New York law that requires nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to accommodate residents' gender identity, including room assignments, restroom access, and preferred pronouns.

The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have cared for poor, terminally ill patients at Rosary Hill Home, a 42-bed nursing facility in Hawthorne, New York, free of charge for more than 120 years.

The group filed the lawsuit on April 6, claiming New York is threatening to shut down the ministry "unless they violate their Catholic faith."

The DOJ announced Thursday its intention to intervene on the nuns' behalf.

"States should take notice that they cannot require Americans to abandon their religious beliefs in the name of woke gender ideology," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, said in a news release.

"For more than a century, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have provided free palliative care to indigent cancer patients in their last days," the news release said.

"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 statement said.

The New York Legislature passed the LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents' Bill of Rights in 2023, and it took effect in May 2024.

The law requires long-term care facilities to allow residents to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity and requires staff to use residents' preferred pronouns.

It also permits residents to be housed according to their gender identity, provisions the sisters argue conflict with their religious beliefs.

Facilities also must post notices stating they do not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, sexual orientation, or HIV status, and workers are required to complete cultural competency training every two years.

The lawsuit also argues that New York exempts facilities operated by the Church of Christ, Scientist from the law while denying similar exemptions to Catholic organizations.

After the law took effect, the New York Department of Health sent three "Dear Administrator" letters informing long-term care facilities, including Rosary Hill Home, of their obligations under the law.

The sisters say the law conflicts with their practices of assigning rooms by biological sex, maintaining sex-segregated restrooms, and using pronouns consistent with biological sex.

Under the mandate, the sisters say they face civil penalties of up to $2,000 per violation, increasing for repeat violations, as well as potential loss of their license and criminal penalties that can include up to a year in prison and a $10,000 fine for willful violations.

The lawsuit states that in March, the sisters formally applied to the Department of Health for a religious exemption, but "Defendants have refused to even respond to the Plaintiffs' written request."

"The Free Exercise Clause absolutely prohibits governmental regulation of religious beliefs and governmental compulsion to affirm beliefs contrary to religious beliefs," the lawsuit states.

"The Mandate requires religious LTCFs [long-term care facilities] to indoctrinate their staff in an ideology that functions as an extended critique of Catholic values, and to speak and act in accordance with that critique.

"The Mandate burdens hybrid rights, including rights related to the free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of expressive association," the lawsuit states.