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DOJ Tried To Get Names And Social Security Numbers Of Trans Kids

Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks at a news conference at the Drug Enforcement Administration on July 15. Separately, Bondi announced last month that the Justice Department had issued more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics that it said “mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology.”

The Justice Department has demanded that a Philadelphia hospital hand over a broad swath of information related to gender-affirming care for minors, including individual patient names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers, according to a copy of a subpoena that became public in a court filing Monday.

The DOJ issued a subpoena to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in June. It requested doctors’ emails, texts, social media and Zoom recordings dating to January 2020, long before any state legislature in the United States had passed a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, The Washington Post first reported.

The subpoena was made public this week in a court filing by the Washington state attorney general’s office. Washington State Attorney General Nicholas W. Brown sued the Trump administration in January to block two executive orders that tried to withhold federal funding from institutions that offered gender-affirming care.

Brown wrote in court documents that he included the subpoena to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia because President Donald Trump has “only escalated” his attacks since a federal judge initially blocked Trump’s efforts to curb youth gender care in March.

Last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Justice Department had issued more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics that it said “mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology.” It was not clear at the time what information the government was seeking from these health care providers.

DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The subpoenas were sent to health care institutions in both states where gender care has been banned and states that have shield laws protecting access to such care. The investigations, legal and health care experts told HuffPost, are part of the Trump administration’s attempt to build a case to allege that medical providers may have violated criminal statutes and engaged in fraud.

News of the subpoenas, along with the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care in June, sowed chaos and confusion in hospitals around the country.

At least 25 hospitals and health care networks across the United States have ended or restricted gender-affirming care services for trans youth since July, HuffPost found in an independent count. None of these hospitals are in the 26 states that have bans on care.

Jacob T. Elberg, a former federal prosecutor specializing in health care, told The Washington Post that the government was using its authority “to target medical providers based on a disagreement about medical treatment rather than violations of the law.” Elberg also noted that under federal privacy law, the DOJ must show that there is a legitimate law enforcement probe to account for information on patient identities.

Alex Sheldon, the executive director of GLMA, an organization of LGBTQ+ health professionals, told HuffPost that the subpoenas are “intended to send a chilling message to everyone, from patients to providers, that they are not safe, not even in the exam room. This is definitely not an element of law enforcement. It’s a targeted political retaliation.”

While efforts to cull sensitive medical data are unprecedented by the federal government, they mirror the actions taken by Republican officials in Texas and Tennessee.

In September 2022, Tennessee’s attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, opened an investigation into the state’s largest provider of pediatric gender care, Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Skrmetti requested private medical records of more than 150 patients who used TennCare, the state’s Medicaid plan, as well as billing codes, queries into specific doctors and information about the hospital’s volunteer program to pair trans youth with peer support from students and community members.

Skrmetti’s investigation came one day after right-wing blogger Matt Walsh posted allegations on social media that Vanderbilt doctors “castrate, sterilize, and mutilate minors.” Tennessee state Republicans later passed a ban on gender-affirming care for youth, citing Walsh’s posts.

The Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care in a decision this June. Several families of transgender youth had sued Skrmetti, claiming that the state law violated the families’ constitutional protections. The conservative majority ruled that the law did not discriminate “on the basis of transgender status.”

Similarly, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton initiated investigations into out-of-state gender care providers. He alleged that those hospitals were providing care to minors from Texas, where such care is prohibited.

Earlier this month, a coalition of 16 states and Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit to try to block the federal government’s investigations into hospitals across the U.S.

“The federal government is running a cruel and targeted harassment campaign against providers who offer lawful, lifesaving care to children,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the states in the suit, said in a statement. “This administration is ruthlessly targeting young people who already face immense barriers just to be seen and heard, and are putting countless lives at risk in the process.”