DOJ to join Dominicans’ suit on NY gender identity law for long-term care facilities
The U.S. Department of Justice has joined a lawsuit filed by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne against New York state over a 2024 law requiring long‑term care facilities to use residents’ preferred pronouns and gender‑based rooming. The suit argues that the law violates the sisters’ religious freedom under the 14th Amendment, as the program serves palliative care for poor cancer patients. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dillon, says the state cannot compel religious organizations to abandon their beliefs in the name of "woke gender ideology.". The lawsuit names New York Governor Kathy Hochul and four state health officials as defendants and is pending in the Southern District of New York, with the state likely seeking dismissal. The case highlights tensions between state civil‑rights protections for LGBTQ+ residents and the Catholic Church’s Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.
3 months ago
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed to become a co‑plaintiff with the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne in their lawsuit challenging New York’s 2024 Long‑Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights, which requires nursing homes to use residents’ preferred pronouns and assign rooms based on gender identity. 1
The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who run the 42‑bed Rosary Hill Home for palliative cancer patients, filed the suit on April 6 in the Southern District of New York, naming Governor Kathy Hochul and four New York State Department of Health officials as defendants. 1
On June 18, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dillon announced the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division would intervene, arguing that the state law violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by discriminating against religious groups. 1
The 2024 law, formally the Long‑Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights for LGBTQ+ New Yorkers and People Living with HIV, mandates that long‑term care facilities use each resident’s chosen name and pronouns and place residents in rooms consistent with their gender identity. It also requires biennial cultural‑competency training for staff. 1
The Dominican Sisters assert that compliance would force them to act against the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” and core Catholic teachings that regard sex as God‑gifted and immutable. They contend the law discriminates by exempting the Church of Christ, Scientist while offering no exemption to Catholic institutions. 1
Doug Wilson, CEO of the Catholic Benefits Association, welcomed DOJ support, emphasizing that religious freedom must protect institutions like the Dominican Sisters. Mother Marie Edward Deutsch, the order’s superior general, expressed gratitude for the federal backing, seeing it as affirmation of the nation’s founding principles. 1
If the Sisters do not comply, the state threatens fines, injunctions, loss of licensing, and possible imprisonment. The lawsuit seeks a declaration that the law is unconstitutional as applied to Catholic health‑care providers. 1*
Assess Catholic religious freedom versus state gender‑identity mandates
Catholic teaching treats religious freedom as a civil right rooted in human dignity and ordered to the common good; it also recognizes that the state must not act as if public life were “religiously and ethically neutral.” When state gender-identity mandates function as compelled conformity that pressures people or communities to deny what they believe about the human person, they can come into direct conflict with that right—especially where mandates require actions or speech contrary to conscience and to the Church’s teaching on human sexual identity.
The International Theological Commission’s study on religious freedom frames religious freedom (in continuity with Dignitatis humanae) as more than toleration: it is a civil right that protects the “inherent religious dimension” of the human person, so that citizens and groups can “live and manifest” their religious commitments.
Key points relevant to your question:
Taken together, Catholic teaching pushes back against a state that treats ethical-religious truth claims as if they must be forced out of public square; instead, it should protect lawful religious manifestation and the freedom of conscience that enables it.
Catholic teaching does not argue for immunity from all law. The same theological study emphasizes that:
So, if a gender-identity mandate is framed as protecting civil peace and equal human dignity, Catholics would assess it under the Church’s understanding of justice and common good. But if it functions to penalize or coerce religious conscience—for example, by demanding denial of moral truths or forcing religious communities to act against them—then Catholic teaching would regard that as a serious threat to religious liberty.
Your question specifically concerns “state gender-identity mandates.” The Catholic sources provided here do not mention “gender identity” legislation directly, so the analysis must proceed by connecting religious freedom principles to what the Church teaches about sexual identity.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
What follows from these teachings for your issue is not that the state must deny equal civil dignity to any person, but that the Church’s moral anthropology requires that people not be coerced into treating what the Church regards as created sexual identity as something to be denied, replaced, or contradicted by law and compelled declarations.
Putting the two strands together—(1) religious freedom as a protected civil right, and (2) the Church’s teaching about sexual identity—common points of tension include:
Compelled speech or testimony
If mandates require individuals or religious institutions to make declarations that contradict Church teaching about what it means to be male or female, that can be viewed as pressure that undermines conscience and religious manifestation. Catholic religious freedom is specifically about the ability to “live and manifest” the religious dimension of human life.
Compelled institutional action
If the state demands that religious communities act in ways that treat the Church’s understanding of sexual identity as irrelevant or false, the issue becomes whether the legal framework preserves real freedom or makes religious life “difficult and precarious,” which the Council text (as summarized by the ITC) denounces.
Ideology that excludes God and ethical truth from public life
The ITC highlights concerns about ideologies excluding God from communal life and describes religious freedom as a safeguard against totalitarian tendencies. If a gender-identity mandate is experienced (in practice) as part of an exclusionary regime that sidelines moral truth claims as unacceptable, Catholic analysis would treat it as more than ordinary regulation.
Within Catholic principles, the “solution” is generally not blanket rejection of all state measures, but the protection of conscience and equal rights.
Therefore, a Catholic approach to gender-identity mandates would typically ask whether the law:
Because the provided sources do not give direct guidance on specific legislative mechanisms (e.g., how exemptions should be structured), the most defensible conclusion from them is principled rather than procedural: Catholic teaching supports robust religious freedom protection when mandates operate coercively against conscience and the Church’s understanding of sexual identity.
Bottom line: Catholic religious freedom, as articulated in continuity with Dignitatis humanae, requires the state to protect the right of persons and communities to live and manifest their religious convictions for the common good. When gender-identity mandates function in a way that coerces denial of created sexual identity or forces religious institutions to act contrary to conscience, that coercion is precisely the kind of threat Catholic teaching associates with attacks on religious freedom.