The Department of Justice (DOJ) is planning to intervene to assist an order of Catholic nuns in their lawsuit against New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul, the agency announced on June 18.
The nuns filed suit after New York passed a law that would require them to house transgender-identifying male patients in the same spaces as women.
“For more than a century, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have provided free palliative care to indigent cancer patients in their last days,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement on June 18.
“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 violates First Amendment free speech and religion, and Fourteenth Amendment equal protection laws, the DOJ said.
The order of nuns, also known as the Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer, has carried on its work for 125 years, providing free hospice care to terminal victims of cancer at Rosary Hill Home in Hawthorne, New York.
“We cannot cure our patients, but we can assure the dignity and value of their final days and keep them comfortable and free of pain,” the order said in its complaint.
But in 2024, New York passed the Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights, which requires patients to be housed according to their preferred gender identity, and allowed to use bathrooms reserved for the opposite sex.
It also requires long-term healthcare facilities’ workers to use patients’ preferred pronouns, and forbids those workers from discouraging cross-dressing or same-sex intercourse between patients.
Since the mandate falls under New York’s Public Health Law, violators can face fines of up to $10,000, one year of imprisonment, and loss of their license.
They are also liable to civil suits by their patients.
In March 2026, the nuns allegedly requested an exemption, but have received no response.
That legislation was meant “to ensure that all New Yorkers—regardless of who they are, who they love, or their HIV status—find safety and support in places where they need it the most.
“Hate will never have a place in New York,” Hochul said in a statement when she signed the law.
The Epoch Times reached out to Hochul for comment.
The nun’s suit states that their religion requires them to respect “inherent dignity of each and every human person.”
“All persons are therefore to be loved and respected in their human freedom, even if they reject the church’s teaching on matters of sexual identity and sexual morality,” the complaint says.
But the sisters also say they “cannot comply with the mandate without violating these sincerely held religious beliefs.”
Under the law, workers at the hospice center have to undergo “cultural competency” training every two years.
The nuns also allege the law compels speech.
Facilities have to post a sign saying they do not discriminate “on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or HIV status.”
