DOJ Wants Private Records from Hospitals That Provide Trans Youth Health Care
One subpoena sent to a children’s hospital in Pennsylvania asked for “every writing or record of whatever type” relating to “gender-related care,” including emails, calendar entries, and Zoom recordings.
In July, the Department of Justice ominously bragged it was filing over 20 subpoenas to “doctors and clinics” that were involved in any sort of gender-affirming treatment for minors. On Monday, one of the summons was made public as part of a court filing, exposing once again how doggedly the Trump administration is trying to pulverize trans youth health care.
The subpoena, filed to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in June, demanded a creepily expansive amount of data. Along with requesting “every writing or record of whatever type” relating to “gender-related care” dating back to January 2020, the filing explicitly asks for emails, calendar entries, voicemails, Zoom recordings, and even messages sent and received through applications “similar” to WhatsApp, an encrypted-messaging service. First reported by the Washington Post, it also requested personnel files, billing records, and insurance claims. CHOP has not immediately responded to a request for comment.
As part of its subpoena splurge in July, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the DOJ was holding accountable the “medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology,” and the investigation has since stirred paranoia and fear among the medical community. As WaPo reports:
Word of the subpoenas spread quickly through hospital administrations, gender care advocates and the tight-knit community of doctors who treat transgender patients. Some hospitals scrubbed information about these doctors from their websites. Providers in private practice say they stopped using email and unencrypted text messages to communicate with each other.
Some who received the subpoenas said they were too afraid to share them with colleagues who do similar work, out of fear that the government was tracking them. Medical providers who once were open to being interviewed about their treatment practices said they were afraid to discuss the subpoenas even on the condition of anonymity and on encrypted platforms such as Signal.
The seven-page filing to CHOP also requested documents from as far back as 2020, demanding files from before states started putting bans on puberty blockers and hormone therapy. (Arkansas was the first state to ban gender-affirming care for minors in 2021.)
As of July, the Human Rights Campaign reports over 120,000 trans youth (aged 13-17) are living in the 27 states with bans on gender-affirming care, with some 17 states facing lawsuits challenging such legislation. The DOJ subpoenas went to states like Pennsylvania, where gender-affirming care is still legal, as well as states where it’s been banned.
Furthermore, nine children’s hospitals received letters from the CDC in May demanding information on gender-affirming care for minors, and threatening that “hospitals accepting federal funds are expected to meet rigorous quality standards.”
While the president’s crusade against trans rights has been a diabolical one, the subpoenas have had a sinister effect. According to a separate report by WaPo following the subpoenas, over a dozen American hospitals “scaled back or ended gender transition programs,” many of which were in blue states. Jennifer Levi, a senior director of trans and queer rights at GLAD Law, has called the subpoenas “a breathtakingly invasive government overreach…It’s specifically and strategically designed to intimidate health care providers and health care institutions into abandoning their patients.”
On Wednesday, Trump called Fox & Friends to vent about his afterlife prospects: “I want to try and get to heaven if possible… I hear I’m not doing well.” Save your breath man, you will not.
