The Justice Department has formally notified a U.S. District Court of its intent to join a lawsuit filed by a group of Catholic nuns against the State of New York. The lawsuit, brought by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, challenges a state healthcare law regarding housing assignments in residential facilities.

Background

The dispute centers on New York Public Health Law § 2803-c-2, which requires long-term care facilities to assign rooms and use names and pronouns that align with a resident’s gender identity rather than their biological sex. However, the Dominican Sisters, who run the Rosary Hill Home, say this directly contradicts their faith.

According to Catholic doctrine, biological sex is God-given and cannot be morally changed, and identifying a person by another sex is considered a religiously prohibited lie. In line with these beliefs, Rosary Hill houses patients in single-sex rooms based on biological sex and uses corresponding pronouns while staff perform close personal care.

Justice Department Involvement

In its legal filing, the Justice Department alleges that New York’s law violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by holding religious facilities to standards that non-religious facilities can avoid. The government’s Complaint-in-Intervention points out that New York permits secular facilities to deny opposite-sex room assignments if a clinical judgment determines the setup would cause psychological harm to a roommate. However, the state offers no equivalent accommodation if a religious facility determines an assignment would cause spiritual harm.

Original reporting: Tampa Free Press — read the source article.