Judge Sides With Trans Kids In Sweeping Rejection Of DOJ Demand For Private Medical Records
The court found the Trump administration had no authority for its subpoenas and affirmed the powerful privacy rights of trans kids and their families.
Featured image by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Families across Pennsylvania exhaled in relief this week after a federal judge delivered one of the strongest judicial pushbacks yet against the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to police gender-affirming care. In a detailed ruling, U.S. District Judge Mark A. Kearney blocked the Department of Justice from obtaining deeply personal medical records of transgender youth treated at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The decision is being welcomed as both a legal victory and a moral one.
The DOJ had sought names, Social Security numbers, home addresses, clinical notes, and psychological assessments of minors who received gender-affirming care dating back to January 2020. The department claimed it needed the information as part of a healthcare fraud investigation, even though gender-affirming care is lawful in Pennsylvania and widely recognized by medical groups as evidence-based.
Judge Kearney was unequivocal. The government, he wrote, “lacks statutory authority for a rambling exploration of the Hospital’s files to learn the names and medical treatment of children.” He went on to emphasize the profound sensitivity of the information the DOJ attempted to seize. “The records sought here fall at the highest end of the intimate and personal spectrum,” he wrote, noting they included “deeply personal disclosures by children about their bodies, sexuality, trauma, family dynamics, self-harm, mental-health history, and cognitive and emotional functioning.”
Kearney added that the department “seeks to pair these disclosures with the names, dates of birth, addresses, and social security numbers of the children involved,” a move he said invoked the strongest constitutional protections. The court was “not persuaded in the least” by the government’s shifting explanations for why it needed this level of access.
Families of trans youth, who had filed their own motions over the summer to quash similar subpoenas, said the ruling validated their fears that the investigation was never about fraud. Instead, they saw it as part of a broader political effort to undermine access to gender-affirming care. That view is widely shared by legal advocates. Mimi McKenzie of the Public Interest Law Center called the decision “a complete rebuke” to what she described as the DOJ’s misuse of investigative power. “The court recognized that the Department of Justice is using its subpoena power not as a tool for legitimate inquiry, but as a tool for intrusion, and it’s not allowing that,” she said in a press release. “This is an important victory. Under this court’s ruling their privacy is protected, their medical records are not going to be turned over, and this court is just not going to condone this type of government overreach.”
Related: Trans Servicemembers File Lawsuit Challenging Clawback Of Their Retirement Money
The ruling arrives as the administration ramps up a nationwide assault on gender-affirming care. In recent months, federal agencies have issued directives encouraging investigations into providers who offer puberty blockers and hormones, despite their long safe history and strong support from the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Subpoenas similar to those sent to CHOP have also targeted Boston Children’s Hospital and more than a dozen other facilities. In September, another federal judge slammed a comparable subpoena in Massachusetts as a “bad faith” “fishing expedition.”
Pennsylvania officials have resisted these efforts. Gov. Josh Shapiro filed a brief last month warning that compliance would erode “trust between doctors and patients” and infringe on state authority to regulate healthcare. CHOP, meanwhile, continues to maintain that protecting its patients was nonnegotiable.
