The US Department of Justice is stepping in to support the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who face penalties under New York state law for refusing to house biological men in women’s rooms or use preferred pronouns at their hospice for the dying poor.

The federal intervention, announced on June 18, 2026, argues that the mandate violates the sisters’ constitutional religious freedoms. The Justice Department said it intended to intervene in the lawsuit filed by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne against New York state.

For more than 125 years, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have run Rosary Hill Home in Hawthorne, New York, offering free palliative care to indigent cancer patients in their final days. The congregation, founded in 1900 by Rose Hawthorne, daughter of the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, accepts no government funding and cares for the dying according to Catholic teaching that recognises biological sex as God-given and immutable.

New York’s 2023 Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights requires facilities to assign rooms, grant bathroom access and use pronouns based on a resident’s self-identified gender identity rather than biological sex. It also compels staff to affirm patients’ sexual preferences, post compliance notices and undergo “cultural competency” training in gender ideology. Non-compliance risks heavy fines, loss of licence, court orders or even jail time.

The sisters say the law forces them to abandon core elements of their faith and vocation. At their 42-bed home, they maintain single-sex rooms and provide intimate care – such as helping women with grooming and nightgowns – rooted in the reality of biological sex. They argue that using opposite-sex pronouns amounts to lying, which their Catholic beliefs forbid, and that compelling them to house men with women violates the dignity and privacy of their female patients.

Harmeet K Dhillon, assistant attorney general and head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, made the federal position clear: “States should take notice that they cannot require Americans to abandon their religious beliefs in the name of woke gender ideology.” She added: “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 licence if they wish to continue serving the dying.”

The DOJ’s statement explicitly references Catholic doctrine that biological sex cannot be morally changed and that identifying a person by another sex is religiously prohibited. It highlights the sisters’ gentle, sex-specific acts of care as expressions of their faith.

The nuns filed suit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on April 6, 2026, after repeated warnings from state health officials. They had requested a religious exemption, noting that one was granted to a Christian Science facility, but received no reply. The lawsuit names Governor Kathy Hochul and senior health department officials as defendants and cites breaches of the First Amendment’s free-exercise and free-speech clauses, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection guarantee. Religion News Service also reported that the lawsuit was filed on April 6 and sought a religious exemption from the law.

The case underscores the growing conflict between aggressive state gender-identity policies and the charitable works of traditional religious communities. Rosary Hill Home, opened in 1901, remains the motherhouse of the order, which continues its founding mission of seeing Christ in the suffering poor while steadfastly upholding natural law and Catholic moral teaching.

Proceedings are ongoing in federal court. The Trump administration’s intervention signals a renewed federal interest in protecting religious institutions from mandates that conflict with their deeply held beliefs.