President Trump’s Justice Department is stepping in to defend an order of Catholic nuns who care for dying cancer patients for free.
On June 18, 2026, the DOJ announced it told a federal district court it intends to intervene in a lawsuit filed by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne against the State of New York.
The fight is over a New York law the Sisters say would force their Catholic residential hospice program to house biological men with women and to use pronouns based on gender identity rather than biological sex.
The Sisters say that violates their faith. The Trump DOJ agrees, and it is backing their constitutional case.
The Justice Department said it intends to intervene in a lawsuit filed by an order of Catholic nuns fighting a New York law requiring nursing homes to house biological males who identify as female with women. https://t.co/kf1ofTJEft
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) June 19, 2026
The Justice Department laid out the stakes plainly in its announcement, saying the United States supports the Sisters’ equal-protection argument against New York.
DOJ says the New York law requires long-term care facilities to assign rooms to transgender residents based on gender identity instead of biological sex. For a Catholic residential hospice, that means state housing rules collide directly with religious belief and practice.
The law also requires staff to address residents using names and pronouns that reflect gender identity rather than biological sex. DOJ says the Sisters object because Catholic teaching treats biological sex as God-given and morally significant.
The Sisters run Rosary Hill Home, a skilled nursing facility that provides free palliative care to indigent cancer patients in their final days. DOJ notes the Sisters welcome every patient who comes to them, which matters because the federal case is about coercion, not refusal to care for the dying.
The legal core is unequal treatment. DOJ says the law actually lets facilities refuse opposite-sex room assignments based on secular clinical judgments about psychological harm, yet offers no equivalent accommodation for religious judgments about spiritual harm.
So New York will bend for a doctor’s clinical reasoning but not for a nun’s faith. DOJ argues that double standard violates the Constitution’s equal protection of religious groups.
The department also says the Acting Attorney General certified the case as an equal-protection matter of general public importance, which is what allows the United States to intervene.
In plain English, the Trump DOJ is telling the court the dispute between one Catholic order and Albany now carries federal civil-rights weight. The fight is over whether a state can carve out secular exceptions while refusing comparable religious ones.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said states cannot require Americans to abandon their religious beliefs in the name of woke gender ideology.
The DOJ says the Civil Rights Division’s Disability Rights Section is handling the matter.
John Solomon, whose outlet covered the same DOJ move, put the headline plainly for readers following the case.
DOJ sues New York for forcing Catholic nursing facilities to house men with women https://t.co/ZR872oCC98
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) June 19, 2026
That framing captures the basic conflict: New York wrote a gender-identity mandate, and the federal government is now backing a Catholic order that says the law forces them to violate their faith.
Earlier reporting on the litigation said the order brought the challenge because the state rule could put its ministry, license, and conscience in direct conflict.
That is the picture New York created. A small religious order that cares for the dying at no cost, dragged into court for refusing to surrender its beliefs.
The Trump DOJ chose a side, and it is the side of the nuns.
