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“Your medical decisions and personal health information belong to you, not the government,” Mamdani wrote in a post to X on June 15.

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani smiling

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani


Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This story originally appeared on Them.

In an amicus brief, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is pushing back on the Justice Department’s effort to obtain the private medical records of transgender minors from NYU Langone Health via criminal subpoena. Mamdani announced on Monday that the New York City Law Department had filed the brief “in support of transgender New Yorkers” last week.


The amicus brief supports a motion filed by the ACLU, NYCLU, and Lambda Legal on behalf of impacted trans patients to block the DOJ from obtaining patient information, including names, of minors who had received gender-affirming care from the major New York City hospital system from 2020 onward.

“Your medical decisions and personal health information belong to you, not the government,” Mamdani wrote in a post to X on June 15. “Proud to stand with trans and queer young people across New York in defending privacy and dignity for all.”

The amicus brief comes after the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Texas criminally subpoenaed NYU for the patient information, as well as information about their medical providers, despite medical privacy laws protecting confidential patient details. The DOJ’s subpoena also included requests for information on whether NYU Langone codes gender-affirming medical care under procedure names that do not specifically apply to trans people.

New Yorkers urged NYU Langone to not divulge the sensitive details of an already vulnerable group, especially as the Trump administration has repeatedly made moves to ban and criminalize trans minors receiving gender-affirming care. Advocates fear that NYU divulging this private medical information with the DOJ would only add fodder to the Trump administration’s attacks on trans healthcare and endanger young patients.

The subpoena “is an attempt to intimidate hospitals to eliminate public health care and push trans people out of public life,” Kei Williams, executive director of the New Pride Agenda, said during a rally on May 13.

The amicus brief supports the motion for a temporary restraining order on behalf of three trans minors and two trans adults who were minors when they received gender-affirming care from NYU Langone against the DOJ. In it, city attorneys assert the importance of keeping this information private.

“When a patient’s personal health information is disclosed without their consent, it gives rise to a profound and visceral sense of violation,” the brief reads. “Sadly, when the subpoenas here are considered alongside the federal government’s larger campaign against gender-affirming care, it would seem that fostering that sense of violation is part of the point.”

The move comes after federal judges across the country have attempted to block similar motions in their states that would give the DOJ access to confidential information. A federal judge in Rhode Island blocked the DOJ’s attempt to gain access to confidential records of trans patients in May; another judge in Maryland blocked a DOJ subpoena in June. In California, another judge quashed a similar request by the DOJ.

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