California families fighting to keep trans kids’ medical records private won a brief reprieve in federal court Tuesday, after a judge in San José temporarily blocked hospital administrators from handing their files 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 weighs whether a Texas grand jury can force the California medical center to hand over its files to the Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations in Kansas.
It also blocks the U.S. Justice Department from compelling records from any other California hospital that may be subject to similar subpoenas, the contents and scope of which remain secret.
The demand represents a major escalation in the Trump administration’s fight to end gender-affirming care for transgender youth — treatment it calls “sex-rejecting procedures” and has compared to child mutilation.
“Part of what is so ominous 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 that they’re going to be 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 go after private medical records, much less criminal subpoenas,” the attorney said. “They’re banking on the public not caring because it’s about a small, unpopular group, but it sets a precedent that can’t be contained.”
California families learned the Justice Department was pursuing their medical records only after NYU Langone Health disclosed it had received a criminal subpoena May 7 in Fort Worth, Texas.
“The grand jury subpoenas received by LPCH and NYU Langone are so similar that both contain the same typo,” the California families’ complaint alleged.
Stanford and NYU were among roughly 20 healthcare providers slapped with civil “administrative” subpoenas last July seeking nearly identical information amid a coordinated, multiagency pressure campaign by the Trump administration to pry open records, rip away millions in Medicaid funding and otherwise hobble institutions that housed clinics treating transgender children nationwide.
By the end of that summer, many of the country’s largest and most prominent clinics for trans youth had either closed or dramatically scaled back care, all but eliminating the provision of puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries for thousands of patients.
“They’re doing this to try to scare both the providers of the medical care and the parents who’ve 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 the government could use their children’s records to strip them of custody. Doctors worried 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 agreements with the federal government to redact identifying information from the files they ultimately handed over, while securing assurances the information would not be used in criminal prosecutions.
Others were vindicated in federal court.
Now, those victories are in question.
“They’ve raised the stakes by trying to pursue this secretive grand jury process,” Levi said of the Trump administration.
Among the documents being compelled by the Texas subpoenas are “complete personnel files” for any employee or contractor who evaluated patients seeking gender-affirming care, provided it, or billed for it 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.
“The [NYU] subpoena places medical providers and hospital administrators in the crosshairs of criminal enforcement mechanisms merely for providing this care,” wrote New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James in a brief to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday. That brief was cosigned by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and 18 Democratic counterparts from around the country.
In a statement, Stanford’s Children’s Hospital said it was “committed to complying with all laws, protecting the privacy of the patients we serve, and delivering the highest quality care.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has so far sought to duck blame for the drama entirely.
Speaking in court Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Atty. John Wollman tiptoed carefully around the issue of the Texas subpoena at the heart of the suit.
“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 brought in the Northern District of Texas.”
The Justice Department did not respond to questions about why it pursued its case in Texas. But critics note that state’s Northern District has long been considered a preferred venue for conservative legal challenges.
“They’re forum shopping,” Minter said. “The hospitals they’re ‘investigating’ have no connection to Texas at all.”
The lawyer emphasized that a victory for the administration in the Stanford case could unleash future investigations into far-more-common treatments, such as for HIV or abortion care.
“It sets a precedent that can be used against anyone,” he said. “This administration is crossing lines that once they’re crossed, it’s very difficult to undo.”
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