Compassion Requires Truth and the Constitution Requires Liberty

The measure of a free society is not how it treats popular opinions. It is how it treats the conscience of those who peacefully disagree. For more than 125 years, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have quietly cared for the dying poor. They ask nothing in return. They accept no government funding, charge no fees, and seek only the freedom to carry out Christ’s command to care for “the least of these.” Yet, New York now threatens these women with fines, loss of licensure, and other legal sanctions unless they speak words and adopt policies that violate their sincerely held religious convictions. Beyond pronouns, this controversy concerns whether government possesses the authority to compel citizens to affirm an ideology contrary to conscience. The First Amendment answers with a resounding no.

This case is about the free exercise of religion and the government compelling speech. Long before today’s debates over gender identity, the Supreme Court made clear that government lacks authority to force citizens to affirm messages they do not believe. In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Court held that schoolchildren could not be compelled to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance, declaring that no public official may prescribe what shall be orthodox in matters of opinion. Three decades later, in Wooley v. Maynard, the Court reaffirmed that principle by holding that New Hampshire could not compel citizens to display the state motto “Live Free or Die” on their license plates. Together, these landmark decisions established an enduring constitutional principle. The freedom of speech necessarily includes the freedom not to speak.

The Constitution likewise protects the free exercise of religion by preventing government from coercing believers to violate the dictates of conscience absent the most compelling constitutional justification. When government compels religious believers to utter words they sincerely believe to be false, it does not simply burden religious exercise. It simultaneously compels speech. Recognizing this constitutional reality, the Supreme Court increasingly rejects analytical frameworks artificially compartmentalizing these complementary protections. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Court explained that the Free Speech Clause and the Free Exercise Clause work in tandem to protect the same liberty interest. Religious expression is simultaneously speech and the exercise of religion. More recently, in Chiles v. Salazar, the Court again demonstrated that government may not suppress or compel speech merely because public officials prefer one viewpoint over another. Properly understood, compelled pronoun policies directed at religious conscience implicate both constitutional guarantees simultaneously. They burden conscience by compelling speech, and they compel speech by burdening conscience. The Constitution therefore doubly protects religious expression through the combined force of the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses.

The Dominican Sisters illustrate precisely why these constitutional protections exist. They are not refusing to provide compassionate care. Indeed, they devoted their lives to serving terminally ill patients whom many others have forgotten. Their objection is not to persons. It is to compelled affirmation of propositions they sincerely believe are false. That distinction matters.

Every person possesses inherent dignity because every person bears the image of God. Those experiencing gender dysphoria or other forms of sexual confusion deserve compassion, respect, friendship, and loving care. Christians are called to speak the truth in love, never with hostility or contempt. At the same time, genuine compassion cannot require government to compel speech or force religious believers to deny what they understand to be true. Authentic love and constitutional liberty both reject coercion. Unfortunately, too many public officials today increasingly approach governance through the lens of critical theory rather than constitutional principle. Critical theory divides society into competing groups of oppressors and oppressed, replacing equal justice under law with identity based political preferences. Disagreement becomes discrimination. Conscience becomes intolerance. Religious conviction becomes harm. History repeatedly demonstrates where this approach leads. Whenever government assumes authority to define acceptable beliefs, compel approved speech, and punish dissenting consciences, liberty steadily gives way to coercion. Tyranny seldom arrives announcing itself. It advances incrementally, often under the attractive banners of inclusion, tolerance, or social justice.

America’s constitutional order rejects that model. The Declaration of Independence recognizes that our rights come not from government but from our Creator. Government therefore exists to secure liberty, not to manufacture orthodoxy. Its legitimate authority is limited precisely because the human person possesses rights that precede the state.

Serious scholars, judges, educators, legislators, and policymakers must possess the courage to resist ideological movements that elevate political power above constitutional limits. The preservation of ordered liberty depends upon leaders willing to defend truth even when doing so is unpopular. Ideas have consequences. When government abandons objective truth in favor of ideological orthodoxy, freedom is never the beneficiary.

The Dominican Sisters should never have been forced into federal court simply for living consistently with their faith while caring for the dying. Their case reminds us that religious liberty is not a special privilege granted by government. It is an unalienable right that government is duty bound to respect.

A constitutional republic committed to ordered liberty protects more than the right to speak. It protects the freedom to remain silent, the freedom to believe, and the freedom to live consistently with one’s conscience. When government respects those unalienable liberties, every American is more secure. When it compels orthodoxy, no one’s freedom remains safe.