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The DOJ is demanding private medical records of transgender patients.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is leading the government intrusion into patients' privacy.
The Trump administration’s Justice Department has taken another aggressive step in targeting transgender people’s access to health care, issuing more than 20 broad subpoenas that demand hospitals and clinics hand over the private records of patients under 19. Advocates and legal experts say the move is an unprecedented abuse of government power, and one that threatens both medical privacy and access to lifesaving care.
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According to The Washington Post, one subpoena sent to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in June ordered staff to turn over virtually every kind of record connected to gender-affirming treatment: billing documents, doctors’ notes, voicemails, encrypted text messages, and even the birth dates, Social Security numbers, and home addresses of patients going back to 2020.
Related: Trump's DOJ subpoenas doctors and medical clinics that care for transgender youth
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the subpoenas last month, accusing medical professionals of “mutilating children in the service of a warped ideology.” Every major U.S. medical association, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the Endocrine Society, supports gender-affirming care for transgender adults and minors, stressing that it is evidence-based and, for many young people, lifesaving.
According to the Post, seven people familiar with the subpoenas said they targeted providers in both states where care remains legal and states where bans have been enacted.
The subpoenas build on months of escalating federal action. In April, Bondi issued a Justice Department memo directing prosecutors to investigate providers under fraud statutes and even the federal ban on female genital mutilation. That directive implemented Trump’s executive order, Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, parts of which have already been blocked by federal courts.
Related: Children’s National Hospital caves under Trump’s pressure & ends gender-affirming care for trans patients
A coalition of 17 states and the District of Columbia has gone to court to stop the administration. In a lawsuit filed on August 1, Democratic attorneys general argued that Trump and Bondi are unlawfully intimidating providers into halting lawful care in their states and trampling state authority to regulate medicine.
The effects on access to care for trans patients have already been devastating. More than a dozen hospitals, including major programs in states where gender care remains legal, have scaled back or shut down services for trans youth in recent weeks. Parents told the Post they are scrambling to find new doctors before prescriptions for puberty blockers or hormones run out.
“This subpoena is a breathtakingly invasive government overreach,” Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law, told the paper. Elizabeth Gill of the American Civil Liberties Union called the targeting of trans youth “deeply troubling,” warning it could open the door to similar attacks on any community the administration decides it doesn’t approve of.
The aggressive federal push comes just two months after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, a ruling legal scholars warn could pave the way for restrictions on trans adults as well.
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