The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is demanding confidential patient information from hospitals that provide gender-affirming healthcare to minors, according to a subpoena made public in a court filing this week and first reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday.
LGBTQ civil rights organization Garden State Equality said Thursday it has been in close contact with its national partners since the organization saw the news of this yesterday, according to Lauren Albrecht, GSE’s senior director of advocacy and organizing. “This has been part of an ongoing effort by the federal government using different tactics to intimidate providers of trans healthcare,” Albrecht said in an email Thursday.
The DOJ wants hospitals to turn over sensitive information, including billing documents, communication with drug manufacturers, and data such as patient dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and addresses, the Post reported, describing the move as “unusual” and quoting legal experts who said it appeared to be unprecedented.
The subpoena was sent in June to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and further requests “‘every writing or record of whatever type’ from doctors related to the provision of hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and gender transition surgery to minors, including voicemails, emails, and text messages on encrypted platforms from January 2020 — more than a year before Arkansas adopted the nation’s first ban on gender-affirming care for youth in April 2021,” the news website The Hill reported Thursday.
The Post said that about half the states have since passed laws against all or most gender treatment of minors and that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that a Tennessee ban did not violate the Constitution.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a July 20 news release that the DOJ sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics involved in performing transgender medical procedures on children. The agency’s investigations include healthcare fraud, false statements, and more, the release said.
“Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice,” Bondi said in the release.
The Post noted that Bondi did not identify who received the subpoenas, what information the government sought, or what potential law violations it is investigating.
The news website lawdork.com reported that a federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to provide information in two weeks about the scope of the DOJ’s “unprecedented” investigation into “the provision of gender-affirming medical care for those under 19 across the country — including in states where the provision of such necessary care is legal.”
Albrecht said the impacted providers are taking the subpoenas very seriously and diligently protecting private medical data as much as is feasible from what she has heard. She said the subpoenas are few — not to diminish their harmful impact — and she emphasized that they are designed “to intimidate more than anything else.”
The senior director added that regardless of what the DOJ demands, privacy law still applies and overcompliance on releasing private data is “a huge huge” liability to providers, and their legal counsel knows this.
“We are monitoring the progress of this closely with our national partners and N.J. providers on how best to support them at this time,” she said.
