A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from obtaining sensitive medical records from healthcare institutions in New York City that provided gender identity care to minors in recent years.
The ruling from US District Judge Katherine Polk Failla is a significant blow to the administration’s ongoing nationwide criminal investigation into the provision of gender identity care, which numerous courts around the country have described as an improper fishing expedition because the government has struggled to identify potential crimes by providers.
Ruling from the bench on Wednesday, Failla, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, provisionally certified a class comprised of individuals who had received care from a New York City provider over the past six years. She also issued a temporary restraining order that bars investigators from obtaining the records, including through a grand jury subpoena that had been issued to NYU Langone Hospitals in recent weeks.
“The scope of information sought by the government here, which includes medical assessments, diagnoses, informed consent records, and revelation of plaintiffs’ transgender status, is significant,” she said, adding that that type of information is “squarely within the class of intimate materials warranting the strongest constitutional protection.”
“Because I cannot conceive of a crime that would require the breadth of disclosures in the subpoena – identifying and sensitive medical information for an entire class of people for a six-year period – I have to find that the government’s interest does not outweigh the plaintiffs’ interest in privacy,” Failla said.
In siding against the administration, the judge pointed to statements made by Justice Department attorneys to her a day earlier that appeared to leave open the possibility that prosecutors may use the records to criminally pursue patients or their parents.
“I’m hard pressed for reasons to rely on the government’s representations that even the patients would not be prosecuted, especially given the inability to comment on any aspect of the alleged investigation or the subpoena,” she said.
Failla is now among a growing group of judges who have sounded the alarm on the Trump administration’s probe and its investigatory tactics.
In ruling after ruling over the past year, judges appointed by presidents from both parties have criticized the probe as an effort aimed not at prosecuting a legitimate crime but rather a bid to pressure institutions to stop providing the care, which is not illegal at the federal level but has been heavily restricted in GOP-led states. Those judges had blocked administrative subpoenas that were issued to providers around the country.
In the case at hand, parents of several children who received the treatments in New York City asked Failla to stop the records from being turned over because they feared the information’s disclosure could expose them to retaliation by the Trump administration.
The subpoena issued to NYU through a federal grand jury in Texas asked the hospital to turn over documents “sufficient to identify every patient who underwent sex-rejecting procedures” and all the records related to those individuals “from initial consultation to the most recent treatment provided.” It also compelled the hospital to produce records pertaining to authorizations from parents for their minor children to receive such care.
The hospital revealed in early May that it had been hit with the subpoena and the class action lawsuit was brought nearly a month later. NYU stopped providing gender identity care for minors earlier this year after the Trump administration threatened to pull federal funding from the hospital. Other hospitals have also ended their programs in the face of pressure from Washington.
Failla pointed to those rulings on Wednesday, saying prosecutors were clearly attempting to get around the adverse rulings by now using grand jury subpoenas, which are generally more difficult to block in court.
“Undeterred by its disastrous showing in the courts, DOJ decided to issue nearly identical document requests in the form of grand jury subpoenas,” she said, going on to criticize the government’s “efforts to recast discredited civil administrative subpoenas as grand jury subpoenas from a hand-picked, far-away jurisdiction in order to minimize judicial review of constitutional infirmities.”
Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represents the plaintiffs in the case, said they’re “thankful the court has granted our emergency request to protect the privacy interests of transgender New Yorkers and their families.”
“Patients and families trust their doctors with their most intimate, private information and should trust in turn that this information will be protected from impermissible and harassing demands for disclosure from the federal government or anyone else,” Strangio said in a statement. The plaintiffs are also represented by the LGBTQ rights group Lambda Legal and the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Through court filings and proceedings, the Justice Department has said that, among other things, it’s looking at whether providers have unlawfully pushed off-label use of drugs for cross-sex hormone therapy and to delay puberty in trans minors. Prosecutors are also probing whether possible fraudulent billing practices have occurred where the treatments have been provided.
The temporary restraining order issued by Failia will remain in effect while more court proceedings play out.
Her ruling comes on the heels of a separate decision by a judge in Minnesota that was also highly critical of the administration’s use of its prosecutorial powers. In that case, Judge Patrick Schiltz found that subpoenas issued to the state’s Democratic governor and other officials were retaliatory in nature and served only to harass them for their opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities.
At least one other hospital has said publicly that it has also received a grand jury subpoena from prosecutors in Texas conducting the investigation into gender identity care: Stanford University’s Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital. Several patients who received care from that hospital are similarly seeking a court order that would prevent their records from being turned over to officials.
This story has been updated with additional information.
