As of last week, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has begun issuing criminal subpoenas seeking information on gender-affirming care administered to minors. This escalation, critics argue, is the latest step in a larger effort to push transgender Americans further out of public life.
“They are asking for identifiable patient records, which should scare every American, whether they’re trans or not,” Tyler Hack, the founder and executive director of Christopher Street Project, a PAC boosting candidates committed to protecting trans rights, told Salon. “Everyone relies on patient privacy in the relationship between them and their provider, and that’s something the Trump administration wants to throw out the window because they want to look through our medical records and decide what they like and don’t like.”
Last week, NYU Langone Health informed its patients that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas had issued criminal subpoenas to multiple medical institutions seeking information on providers and every minor to whom it had administered gender-affirming care in recent years.
So far NYU Langone Health is the only hospital system to publicly disclose its receipt of the subpoena, done in compliance with New York’s shield law that requires disclosure within 30 days. The hospital’s receipt of a grand jury subpoena suggests that the DOJ has launched a criminal investigation into providers, which introduces the possibility of future jail time, prosecution and even charges. It marks the first known time the DOJ has sought such information on gender-affirming care for a criminal probe.
According to the grand jury subpoena, the DOJ is seeking names and files of providers, administrators, accountants, attorneys, volunteers and other personnel involved in what it calls “sex-rejecting procedures” and their related “billing or coding activities.”
It also demands the names and medical documentation of every transgender minor who received gender-affirming care from the hospital since 2020, including “documents relating to the clinical indications, diagnoses and assessments that formed the basis for providing” the care. “De-identified information,” the summons adds in a HIPAA statement, “could not reasonably be used in its stead.”
“It’s sort of a backdoor way to try to effectively ban gender-affirming care for minors nationwide.”
Katie Eyer, a Rutgers University professor of anti-discrimination law, told Salon that the criminal subpoena creates a greater risk that institutions like NYU Langone will feel compelled to disclose sensitive information, rather than attempting to hold it back, because of criminal penalties that can be attached to it. It also raises a concern, she said, of what the government might do with that information once it receives it.
“I think the clear target is to shut down gender-affirming care for children in the United States, even in states that permit it or that are trying to protect access to that type of healthcare,” she said. “It’s sort of a backdoor way to try to effectively ban gender-affirming care for minors nationwide.”
Notably, this government action came after NYU Langone shuttered its Transgender Youth Health Program in February, citing the “current regulatory environment” among other reasons, a move Eyer said could signal “the very real possibility that institutions will face enforcement efforts.”
“The thought could be, on the part of the administration, ‘Let’s make sure that the places that have stopped will stay stopped. Let’s not let off the pressure on them, such that if they get a letter from the state attorney general in New York telling them they’re out of compliance with state law, they’ll still fear us more,’” she said, adding that the tactic could also suggest a real intent to bring criminal prosecutions against institutions or individuals for providing gender-affirming care to minors.
A DOJ spokesperson told Salon that the department does not comment on grand jury subpoenas or investigations.
Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.
The administration’s stand against gender-affirming care began as soon as Trump returned to office. On his first day, Trump signed an executive order admonishing what it describes as harmful “gender ideology extremism” and federally recognizing only two “immutable” sexes — male and female — established “at conception.” Days later, he authorized another executive order barring the government from funding, sponsoring, promoting or assisting in minors’ transitions and stripping funding from institutions providing gender-affirming care.
Since then, the assault on healthcare for trans minors has only ramped up, coming amid the consideration of hundreds of anti-trans bills in state legislatures across the country year-to-year. The Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision last summer in U.S. v. Skrmetti, a case over a Tennessee law restricting gender-affirming care for minors, that denied transgender Americans sex-based protection from discrimination under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. In December 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a declaration claiming that gender-affirming care for children failed to meet professional standards.
Meanwhile, during former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s tenure, the DOJ issued administrative subpoenas to some two dozen medical institutions that provided gender-affirming care. Last Friday, the department announced it reached its first settlement in the nationwide civil investigation, securing agreements with Texas Children’s Hospital that include the hospital’s commitment to cease gender-affirming treatments and establish a “detransition clinic.”
Jessica Clarke, a professor of anti-discrimination law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, told Salon in an email that the latest subpoena makes clear that “the administration is using every legal tool at its disposal to end gender-affirming healthcare.” She pointed to its origin in the Northern District of Texas, which is considered one of the most conservative jurisdictions in the country.
Spring savings are here!
“The effect of these subpoenas is to intimidate healthcare providers and patients,” she added, noting that seven district judges, from courts around the country, have found subpoenas issued to healthcare providers were for an improper purpose. “The DOJ is now having federal enforcers in the Northern District of Texas issue grand jury subpoenas, so that cases will be decided by Judge Reed O’Connor, a favorite of the Trump administration.”
Hack said the subpoena is “incredibly disturbing” and “really dangerous” because of the threat it poses to children’s access to such “life-saving healthcare” as providers sunset and rollback services.
“These are real kids. These are real patients who need their healthcare and are not going to be able to get it,” Hack said. “More broadly, everyone deserves to be able to seek and receive the healthcare that they need without fear that they, their parents or their doctors are going to be prosecuted for it.”
They also noted that the government could extend its attack on gender-affirming care to transgender adults.
“We have seen that anyone who is trans is on the target list, and no one is really safe,” Hack said, adding: “It’s clear what their goal is, and we both need to run out the clock here and stop them by enacting protections at the next possible opportunity, so that no administration and no Congress can do this ever again.”
Read more
about the assault on trans rights
The post Trump’s DOJ escalates its gender affirming care attack on minors appeared first on Salon.com.
from Salon.com https://ift.tt/rto3n8R
Hello, my name is Asma E Nur. I am a tech blogger.
No comments:
Post a Comment