California families sue to stop Trump DOJ from obtaining trans kids’ records via Texas grand jury

A group of California families with transgender children is asking a federal court to block the Trump administration from obtaining confidential medical records through a Texas grand jury subpoena.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, challenges a subpoena issued by federal prosecutors in Texas seeking records from Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. The families argue that the Department of Justice is attempting to accomplish through criminal process what it has repeatedly failed to achieve through civil and administrative investigations, including access to the identities, diagnoses, treatment histories, and medical decisions of transgender youth and their families.

The case comes just days after hospitals across the country disclosed that they had received criminal grand jury subpoenas from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas seeking records related to gender-affirming care. Earlier this month, NYU Langone Health confirmed it had received such a subpoena, prompting protests from LGBTQ+ advocates and renewed concerns that the federal government was attempting to build a nationwide database of transgender patients, families, and providers.

Related: Trump's DOJ subpoenas doctors and medical clinics that care for transgender youth

According to the complaint, the six California families learned about Stanford’s subpoena only through public reports about similar demands sent to other hospitals. They were never notified that federal prosecutors sought records containing their children’s identities, diagnoses, treatment histories, and parental consent forms.

The plaintiffs include parents of transgender children who received a range of care at Stanford, from counseling and psychological support to prescription medications. One family's child, according to the complaint, received only counseling and social support services, a detail the families argue demonstrates the breadth of the government's effort to obtain information about transgender youth regardless of the type of care they received.

The lawsuit describes the subpoena as the latest step in a yearlong federal effort that has repeatedly run into judicial resistance.

According to the complaint, the Justice Department previously sought similar records through administrative subpoenas issued to hospitals across the country. Those efforts largely failed. The lawsuit states that at least eight federal judges quashed or blocked the earlier subpoenas, with one court describing the government's stated rationale as a "smokescreen" and another concluding prosecutors had "issued the subpoena first and searched for a justification second."

Rather than accept those defeats, the families argue, federal prosecutors turned to a grand jury in Texas and obtained subpoenas seeking substantially the same information under the secrecy afforded to criminal investigations.

The complaint notes that neither Stanford, the families involved, nor the care at issue has any apparent connection to Texas. Yet prosecutors obtained the subpoena through a federal court there and set a June 10 deadline for the hospital to comply.

"Parents trust their children's doctors with the most sensitive information a family has," Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. "When the federal government can reach across the country, into a hospital that has no connection to the court that issued the subpoena, and pull a child's entire medical file out of the filing cabinet without so much as a phone call to the parents, every family in America should be concerned."

Related: Trump DOJ criminal subpoena seeks identities of trans youth patients at NYU Langone

According to publicly available copies of similar subpoenas cited in the complaint, the government is seeking documents sufficient to identify every patient who received the targeted care, including clinical assessments, diagnoses, treatment records, informed consent forms, intake paperwork, and parent or guardian authorizations.

The families argue that the demands would reveal not only deeply personal medical information but also the identities of parents who sought lawful healthcare for their children in states where such care remains legal.

"The government is demanding that a hospital hand over records identifying parents who made a private medical decision for their child, in consultation with their doctors," Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law, said in a statement. "Whatever one thinks about the underlying medical question, the principle that the federal government cannot compile targeted lists of families to advance political ends should be beyond dispute."

Related: Trump-appointed judge says DOJ ‘proven unworthy’ of trust in blistering trans care case ruling

At the heart of the lawsuit is the question of how much power the federal government has to obtain private medical information about people who are not accused of any crime.

The families argue that the subpoena violates constitutional protections for informational privacy, infringes on Fourth Amendment safeguards against unreasonable government searches, and denies equal protection by targeting transgender youth and their families for scrutiny that no other category of patients faces.

The complaint also warns that allowing the subpoenas to proceed could deter parents from seeking medical care for their children and undermine trust in the doctor-patient relationship.

The plaintiffs are seeking a temporary restraining order before Stanford's June 10 compliance deadline. They have asked the court to intervene by June 9 to prevent the records from being disclosed while the case proceeds.