Religious Showdown: DOJ Enters The Fight

A Trump Justice Department now says New York’s radical gender mandate targets Catholic nuns while letting other faiths off the hook.

Story Snapshot

Trump’s Department of Justice is intervening to back Catholic nuns suing New York over its transgender nursing home mandate.
The law forces facilities to use preferred pronouns, mixed-sex rooms, and opposite-sex bathroom access based on gender identity.
The nuns say the mandate violates core Catholic teaching and could shut down their free hospice for dying cancer patients.
Federal lawyers argue New York is favoring one religion over another by carving out a special exemption for Christian Scientists only.

Trump Justice Department Steps In To Defend the Sisters

The Trump Department of Justice has announced it intends to intervene in support of the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, who run Rosary Hill Home, a small Catholic nursing facility for the dying poor in Hawthorne, New York.^[1] Federal lawyers say New York’s 2024 “LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights” crosses a constitutional line by forcing religious facilities to follow gender-identity rules that clash with their faith, while giving a break to certain non-Catholic religious homes.^[1]

The Justice Department’s complaint argues the law violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause because it “requires religious facilities to meet requirements that violate religious beliefs, while excusing non-religious facilities from those same requirements.”^[1] It also notes that Catholic teaching holds biological sex is God-given and fixed, and that calling a man a woman is, in their view, religiously prohibited lying.^[1] That framing sets up a major clash between state “anti-discrimination” activism and basic First Amendment rights.

What New York’s Mandate Forces on Nursing Homes

New York’s long-term care law, signed by Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul in late 2023, bans nursing homes and staff from “discriminating” based on actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or HIV status.^[6] In practice, that means facilities must assign rooms based on gender identity, not biological sex, allow opposite-sex bathroom access, use preferred pronouns, permit residents’ sexual relationships, and post public notices pledging full compliance with the state’s ideology.^[6]^[11]

The statute requires nursing homes and adult care facilities to affirm residents’ chosen identities in room assignments, bathroom use, and daily interactions.^[11] A summary for providers explains that facilities may not deny rooming requests, restrict association or consensual intimacy, or limit access to care on these grounds, except in narrow clinical cases.^[11] For the Hawthorne sisters, those rules cut directly against their duty to protect modesty, guard frail female patients, and keep speech and teaching in line with Catholic moral doctrine.^[7]

Who the Dominican Sisters Are, and Why They Sued

The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have spent almost 125 years caring for terminally ill cancer patients who cannot pay, offering free hospice care at Rosary Hill Home as a work of mercy.^[2]^[4] They say they welcome all who need care, but they cannot embrace an ideology that denies the reality of male and female or treat patients as the opposite sex in word or practice without betraying their vows.^[7] Their lawsuit stresses they are not seeking to mistreat anyone; they are asking for a narrow religious exemption.^[3]^[7]

According to the Catholic Benefits Association, which is assisting the sisters, they first asked the New York State Department of Health for an exemption because the mandate “infringes upon their Catholic values, burdens their exercise of religion, and compromises their free speech rights.”^[7] After two weeks with no response, they filed a federal complaint on April 6, 2026, seeking an injunction to protect their free exercise and to keep their ministry to the sick poor open.^[2]^[7] They warn that fines, license loss, and even jail time are on the table if they refuse to bow to the mandate.^[2]

Unequal Treatment and a Special Carveout for Another Church

The sisters’ case is not just about pronouns or bathrooms; it is also about unequal treatment of different faiths by the state. Their complaint, echoed in Christian media coverage, notes that while the law offers no general religious exemption, it does carve out a narrow protection for facilities run by the Church of Christ, Scientist whose teachings focus on spiritual means of healing alone.^[3]^[4] Catholic and other religious homes do not receive the same protection under the statute, even though their doctrines are just as deeply held.^[3]

🥜 Trump administration backs Catholic nuns fighting New York transgender mandate

The Trump administration is stepping in to support a group of Catholic nuns in their legal battle against a New York law that mandates nursing homes to accommodate biological males identifying … pic.twitter.com/o3iF6j55Fm

— Squirrel Brain News (@aylookasquirrel) June 19, 2026

The Trump Justice Department leans on that carveout to argue that New York is favoring one religious tradition over another, which raises serious constitutional problems.^[1]^[3] Under our Constitution, government cannot pick winners and losers among faiths or grant special status to one church while forcing others to contradict their beliefs to stay licensed. For many conservatives, this looks less like neutral civil-rights enforcement and more like targeted pressure on orthodox Christians who reject today’s gender ideology.

What Is at Stake for Religious Freedom Nationwide

This fight in one small New York hospice sits inside a much larger national pattern. Across the country, religious hospitals, schools, and charities are being told to choose between state-imposed gender policies and long-held beliefs about sex, the body, and family.^[8] Catholic hospitals have already gone to federal appeals courts to challenge federal rules that would force them to perform or insure sex-reassignment procedures that they consider harmful, especially for children.^[8]

At the same time, federal guidance on conscience rights makes clear that there is a long tradition of protecting doctors, nurses, and institutions from being forced into procedures that violate their faith, such as abortion or sterilization.^[20] The Trump administration’s backing of the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne places the federal government’s weight on the side of that tradition. For many readers who worry about growing state power and “woke” mandates, this case could mark a key test of whether religious Americans are still free to serve the poor without first pledging loyalty to gender ideology.