DOJ subpoenas patients' information in transgender care investigation
The Justice Department (DOJ) is demanding confidential patient information from hospitals that provide gender-affirming health care to minors, including their birth dates, Social Security numbers and home addresses, according to a subpoena made public in a court filing this week.
The subpoena to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, sent in June and first reported by The Washington Post Wednesday, 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 request also calls for documents relating to each minor patient’s clinical indications, diagnoses or assessments “that formed the basis for prescribing puberty blockers or hormone therapy,” as well as documentation on informed consent, patient intake and authorization from a parent or guardian for their child to receive transition-care.
The subpoena also requested personnel files, training manuals, billing records, insurance information and communications between hospital staff and pharmaceutical manufacturers and sales representatives of drugs used to treat gender dysphoria in minors.
In July, DOJ said it had sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics “involved in performing transgender medical procedures on children.” The department said it sent the subpoenas in investigations of “healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.”
“Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement at the time.
The Trump administration has broadly worked to unravel protections for gender-affirming care and ban treatment for minors since President Trump’s return to office in January. An executive order he signed roughly a week into his second term seeks to end federal support for transition-related care for children and teens up to 19 years old. Federal judges have blocked parts of the order to withhold funding from hospitals.
Another executive order, one of several Trump has signed that directly target transgender people, proclaims the U.S. recognizes only two unchangeable sexes, male and female, and broadly prohibits federal funds from supporting “gender ideology.”
In June, the FBI asked the public to report tips “of any hospitals, clinics, or practitioners” that offer transition-related surgeries to minors, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent letters in May to nine hospitals demanding information on “medical interventions for gender dysphoria in children.”
CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, in announcing the letters, referenced an unsigned report issued earlier that month by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that broke with major professional medical organizations in casting doubt on evidence supporting gender-affirming care for minors.
The roughly 400-page review advocates for greater reliance on psychotherapy, rather than medical intervention, to treat gender dysphoria in young people. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for health care providers to update their regulations and protocols to align with the report’s recommendations.
Laws passed in more than half of the nation ban gender-affirming care for youth. In June, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law outlawing treatment, ruling the law does not discriminate based on sex.