California families fighting to keep trans children's medical records private got a brief reprieve in federal court Tuesday, after a San Jose judge temporarily blocked hospital administrators from turning over their records to the federal government in response to a criminal subpoena.
The decision bars Stanford's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital from producing pediatric records for at least the next two weeks while U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts considers whether a Texas grand jury can force the California medical center to turn over its files to the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigations in Kansas.
It also prevents the U.S. Department of Justice from obtaining compelling records from any other California hospitals that may be subject to similar subpoenas, the content and scope of which remain secret.
The lawsuit represents a major escalation in the Trump administration's fight to end gender-affirming care for transgender youth, treatment it calls “sexual rejection procedures” and has compared it to child mutilation.
“Part of what is so sinister about this is that the criminal grand jury proceedings are shrouded in secrecy,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights and an attorney for the plaintiffs. “It's pure intimidation. It's designed to make people afraid of being criminally prosecuted.”
The Justice Department declined to comment on the criminal subpoenas or any related investigation. But Minter and others said the move was unprecedented.
“The federal government has never used subpoenas to pursue private medical records, much less criminal subpoenas,” the attorney said. “They hope the public won't care because it's a small, unpopular group, but it sets a precedent that can't be contained.”
The California families learned that the Department of Justice was investigating their medical records only after NYU Langone Health revealed that it had received a criminal subpoena on May 7 in Fort Worth, Texas.
“The grand jury subpoenas received by LPCH and NYU Langone are so similar that they both contain the same typographical error,” the California families’ complaint alleges.
Stanford and New York University are among about 20 health care providers that received “administrative” civil subpoenas last July seeking nearly identical information amid a coordinated, multi-agency pressure campaign by the Trump administration to open records, strip millions in Medicaid funding and otherwise hamper institutions that housed clinics treating transgender children across the country.
By the end of that summer, many of the country's largest and most prominent trans youth clinics had closed or drastically reduced care, virtually eliminating the supply of puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries for thousands of patients.
“They are doing this to try to scare both health care providers and parents who have sought it and need to secure it for their children,” said Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law.
Parents feared that the government could use their children's records to strip them of custody. The doctors were concerned that they could be arrested and imprisoned for providing legal and widely recognized treatment to pediatric patients.
Some clinics, including the now-shuttered Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, negotiated deals with the federal government to redact identifying information from the files they ultimately turned over, while ensuring the information would not be used in criminal proceedings.
Others were vindicated in federal court.
Now, those victories are in doubt.
“They have raised the stakes by trying to conduct this secret grand jury process,” Levi said of the Trump administration.
Among the documents required by the Texas subpoenas are “complete personnel records” of any employee or contractor who evaluated patients seeking gender-affirming care, provided it, or billed on behalf of the specified hospital, as well as all of their supervisors.
The subpoenas also demand “documents sufficient to identify each patient” who underwent such care, as well as extensive medical records related to their diagnosis and treatment.
“He [NYU] “The subpoena places medical providers and hospital administrators in the crosshairs of criminal law enforcement mechanisms simply for providing this care,” New York Attorney General Letitia James wrote Wednesday in a brief to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. That brief was co-signed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and 18 Democratic counterparts from across the country.
In a statement, Stanford Children's Hospital said it was “committed to complying with all laws, protecting the privacy of the patients we serve, and providing the highest quality care.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has so far tried to completely deflect blame for the drama.
Speaking in court Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Wollman tiptoed around the Texas subpoena issue at the center of the lawsuit.
“Obviously we can't say anything to confirm or deny the existence of a grand jury subpoena,” Wollman said. “Any motion to quash this subpoena, assuming there was one, would have to be filed in the Northern District of Texas.”
The Justice Department did not respond to questions about why it pursued its case in Texas. But critics point out that the state's Northern District has long been considered a preferred venue for conservative legal challenges.
“They're looking for forums,” Minter said. “The hospitals they are 'investigating' have no connection to Texas.”
The lawyer emphasized that an administration victory in the Stanford case could trigger future investigations into much more common treatments, such as HIV or abortion.
“It sets a precedent that can be used against anyone,” he said. “This administration is crossing lines that once crossed, are very difficult to undo.”
