Philadelphia hospital slams Trump's DOJ, saying it 'reverse-engineered' claims about gender-affirming care

A Pennsylvania hospital says the Trump administration used “dubious” and “unreliable” data on gender-affirming care to justify its attempt to seize children’s medical records.

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Attorneys for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) filed a scathing legal brief, first reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, that challenges an attempt by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to subpoena private medical information for minors obtaining the medical care in question.

Specifically, the brief questions data submitted by Lisa Hsiao, DOJ’s Acting Director of the Consumer Protection Branch, who offered the government’s legal justification for the record seizure nine weeks after first demanding the patient files.

“The Hsiao Declaration includes two CHOP-specific allegations. Both are threadbare, of dubious origin, and so heavily qualified and caveated as to offer the Court no meaningful information,” reads the brief, filed by Lawrence McMichael and attorneys for the Philadelphia hospital.

Hsiao asserted in a legal declaration that over the course of seven years, more than 250 CHOP patients were diagnosed with “precocious puberty” at age 10 or older, then claimed that was “well beyond the age at which children are typically diagnosed.” But the administration provided no evidence, such as diagnosis data from other hospitals, to defend that assessment.

“Even assuming the cited figure is atypically high, the Government’s allegation is far too underdeveloped to offer useful information. For one thing, the provenance of the dataset is entirely unknown. The Hsiao Declaration does not indicate whether it might include patients who were diagnosed at a younger age by another provider,” the CHOP brief states.

“And critically, the Declaration does not specify how many patients received treatment for gender dysphoria.”

Related: Trump DOJ demands private medical information of transgender patients

Worse, the brief says Hsaio, under threat of perjury, said the government had knowledge of “very concerning allegations of a minor being put on puberty blockers after his first visit and cross sex hormones after his second.” The government’s brief initially claimed a lawsuit included those allegations, but then filed an amended declaration that cited no such legal action.

That appears to be because Hsiao read a New York Post interview with Miles Yardley, a trans model-turned-detransitioner, who claimed he was suing CHOP for malpractice over medical treatments received at age 15. That interview was published on July 26, but attorneys for the hospital say to date, they have no knowledge of a lawsuit being filed.

“The similarities between the report and the allegations in the Hsiao Declaration—including the reference to a lawsuit—raise suspicions that, in looking to justify its investigative interest in CHOP, the Government simply searched the internet for stories fitting its narrative and presented the one it found as fact without adequately scrutinizing its veracity,” CHOP’s legal brief states.

Attorneys for the hospital say DOJ clearly “reverse-engineered” allegations to match the accusations it made when it first demanding the private medical information of children nearly two months prior.

The DOJ in June demanded CHOP turn over virtually every kind of record connected to gender-affirming treatment including doctors’ notes, voicemails, encrypted text messages, and even the birth dates, Social Security numbers and home addresses of patients.

That followed allegations from Attorney General Pam Bondi that medical professionals across the nation were committing genital mutilation.