A federal judge harshly criticized the Trump administration for its “reckless” attempts to mislead the judiciary and target transgender youth by pressuring hospitals to disclose sensitive medical information, according to an order issued Wednesday night.
Judge Mary S. McElroy, nominated to the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island by President Donald Trump in 2019, blocked the Department of Justice’s subpoena for over five years of records concerning transgender minor patients at Brown Health’s Rhode Island Hospital.
“The DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case,” McElroy wrote in a 24-page ruling. “Its representatives have, under oath, misrepresented salient facts.”
McElroy’s decision is the latest setback for the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain private medical information about transgender youth and their healthcare providers. So far, seven other federal courts have prevented the DOJ from enforcing similar subpoenas, concluding they were issued for an “improper purpose.”
“The Administration has publicly characterized gender affirming care for minors as abuse, directed the DOJ to bring its practice to an end, and celebrated when hospitals curtailed such programs as a result of this subpoena campaign,” McElroy wrote.
According to the order, the DOJ issued a broad subpoena to the Rhode Island hospital last summer, demanding the names of minor patients, their Social Security numbers, addresses, diagnoses, clinical histories, and family information.
The Justice Department claimed the records were necessary for an investigation into potential violations of federal food and drug laws related to the off-label prescription of puberty blockers and hormone therapies for gender dysphoria in transgender youth.
However, McElroy noted that federal courts have permitted off-label use of FDA-approved drugs, a common medical practice. She concluded the government’s subpoena lacked a “congressionally authorized purpose.” Approximately 21% of prescriptions are off-label; for instance, Ozempic, now popular for weight loss, was originally approved for Type 2 diabetes, and Minoxidil, a blood pressure medication, is often prescribed for hair loss.
Later in the order, McElroy accused the DOJ of intentionally misleading courts to shop the case to a more sympathetic judge in Texas. After receiving the subpoena, Rhode Island Hospital spent months negotiating with the DOJ over its scope, but the DOJ abruptly stopped communicating. Simultaneously, DOJ attorneys quietly attempted to file a petition to enforce the subpoena in the Northern District of Texas before conservative Judge Reed O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee who previously blocked trans-inclusive policies.
“This omission leads the Court to conclude this request was a subterfuge to prevent RIH from realizing that DOJ had decided to go to Texas for an order compelling production of the very records that they had been discussing for months,” McElroy wrote.
McElroy closed her searing order by stating that disclosing private medical records would likely violate transgender minors’ 14th Amendment rights to informational privacy. The DOJ’s continual requests for “intimate medical details” represent a “drastic overreach of investigative authority.” The DOJ has since appealed the decision.
This news comes days after the DOJ took the unprecedented step of launching a criminal probe into another hospital providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth. New York University’s Langone Health posted on its website Monday evening that it had received a federal grand jury subpoena seeking a wide range of “de-identified information” about minor trans patients and their healthcare providers.
The federal government’s efforts to gather data on trans patients appear inspired by actions of some Republican officials in Texas and Tennessee, who have similarly sought records about transgender youth over the past three years.
