Judge Orders U.S. to Stop Seeking Medical Records of Transgender Youth

New York|Judge Orders U.S. to Stop Seeking Medical Records of Transgender Youth

A federal judge in Manhattan on Wednesday ordered the Justice Department to stop seeking sensitive medical information about transgender youth who had received transition-related medical care at New York City hospitals.

The Trump administration had sought to end gender transition treatments for adolescents, asserting that they harm impressionable and vulnerable children. For more than a year, the Justice Department had been investigating hospitals and medical providers that had offered gender transition care to youth. The ruling poses a significant obstacle to those investigations.

In her ruling on Wednesday, delivered in a conference call with attorneys, Judge Katherine Polk Failla of Federal District Court in Manhattan said that she was troubled by the breadth of a grand jury subpoena that had been issued last month to NYU Langone, a major Manhattan health system. The subpoena sought identifying information and medical records about adolescent patients who had received transition care during the past six years.

Those patients, the judge said, had “sought gender affirming treatments under a reasonable assumption of absolute privacy.” She said it was difficult to fathom a reason the government needed the medical information.

“Because I cannot conceive of a crime that would require the breadth of disclosure sought in the subpoena — 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,” Judge Failla said.

If she did not intervene, she said, the consequences could have been severe.

“If not enjoined, the subpoena would allow the government to obtain and disclose the most intimate details of plaintiff’s medical histories and personal lives — in particular their transgender status,” she said.