Judge Quashes Subpoena Demanding Trans Medical Records
Justice Department had demanded Boston Children's Hospital hand over patients' and employees' personal information under the guise of combating medical "fraud."
A federal judge has quashed a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice demanding that Boston Children’s Hospital turn over private medical information on youth receiving gender-affirming care, blasting the request as a “fishing expedition” aimed at prosecuting doctors under the guise of investigating health care fraud.
In his ruling, Judge Myong Joun, a Biden appointee, said the Justice Department sought an “astonishingly broad array of documents and information that are virtually unlimited in scope,” including patients’ Social Security numbers, home addresses, and personal details, as well as the complete personnel files of all 2,000 Boston Children’s Hospital employees, regardless of whether they had any involvement in providing gender-affirming care to minors.
The subpoena also sought all of the hospital’s correspondence with pharmaceutical companies, sales representatives, and marketing departments.
In January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order — since blocked by two courts — seeking to strip federal funding from institutions that research or provide gender-affirming care to minors. In its wake, several clinics, even in states without bans, shut down or stopped offering services to youth diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
To enforce Trump’s order, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo directing Justice Department staff to treat cases where minors received gender-affirming care as female genital mutilation. The memo threatened to jail doctors for up to 10 years if they assisted transgender youth in obtaining hormones, puberty blockers, or surgical interventions.
“The [Trump] Administration has been explicit about its disapproval of the transgender community and its aim to end [gender-affirming care],” Joun wrote. “The subpoena reflects those goals, comprising overbroad requests for documents and information seemingly unrelated to investigating fraud or unlawful off-label promotion [of puberty blockers and hormone therapy].”
Joun noted that the Justice Department failed to submit any affidavits or evidence showing it had a legitimate reason for demanding the information. While the department claimed it was investigating alleged fraudulent billing and off-label promotion of transition-related drugs, its lawyers provided no evidence that Boston Children’s Hospital was engaged in such practices.
“The Government may be correct that it need not provide probable cause for its investigations, but it cannot use its subpoena power to go on a fishing expedition,” he wrote.
In a June 2025 memo to its Civil Division, the Justice Department said it was investigating whether providers were helping patients skirt state-level bans on gender-affirming care for youth by “submitting claims to Medicaid with false diagnosis codes.” But Massachusetts is not among the 27 states or territories that prohibit doctors from prescribing such treatments.
“[M]assachusetts does not ban [gender-affirming care]. And there exists a diagnosis code for GAC for billing purposes,” Joun wrote. “It is thus difficult to understand what exactly the Government is trying to investigate BCH for.”
Joun concluded that the subpoena was “motivated…by bad faith,” writing: “It is abundantly clear that the true purpose of issuing the subpoena is to interfere with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ right to protect [gender-affirming care] within its borders, to harass and intimidate [Boston Children’s Hospital] to stop providing such care, and to dissuade patients from seeking such care.”
Boston Children’s Hospital praised the ruling as a victory for protecting the privacy of patients, their families, and the health care professionals who work there.
“Access to gender-affirming care is a protected right under Massachusetts law, and we remain committed to providing safe, evidence-based, and compassionate care for every patient and their family,” the hospital said in a statement.
But a spokesperson for the Justice Department vowed that Joun’s ruling was not the last word, leaving open the possibility of appealing the decision.
“As Attorney General Bondi has made clear, this Department of Justice will use every legal and law enforcement tool available to protect innocent children from being mutilated under the guise of ‘care,'” the spokesperson told Time magazine.
The Boston Children’s Hospital subpoena was one of more than 20 sent to doctors and clinics under investigation for alleged “fraudulent billing practices,” based on the assumption that they were prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to minors — or even performing surgeries — who lived in states with gender-affirming care bans.
Many doctors and clinics have moved to quash the subpoenas, following Boston Children’s Hospital’s lead, but some have already turned over records to state authorities.
A month before the DOJ subpoenas, Vanderbilt University Medical Center provided transgender patient records to Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office, which said it was investigating “medical billing fraud.” Two patients have since filed a class-action lawsuit, alleging the disclosure harmed transgender patients and violated both state law and the hospital’s own privacy policies.
While praising Joun’s ruling, some LGBTQ groups warned that the Trump administration was unlikely to backtrack on its goal of making gender-affirming care illegal nationwide.
A GLAAD spokesperson told Time: “The federal government’s unhinged campaign against best practice care should alarm every family who knows that health care decisions belong with them and that their private data should be protected.”
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has temporarily blocked West Texas A&M University's ban on student drag performances, finding the prohibition likely unconstitutional. The dispute began in March 2023, when University President Walter Wendler unilaterally canceled a campus drag fundraiser for The Trevor Project organized by Spectrum WT, the school's LGBTQ student group.
In a campus-wide email at the time, Wendler said he canceled the drag show because he believes drag makes a mockery of womanhood, comparing it to "blackface" and claiming drag performances "denigrate" women. He added that drag shows are "harmful and wholly inappropriate," even if not criminal, according to Amarillo NBC affiliate KAMR-TV.
The former Kentucky clerk -- and anti-LGBTQ culture warrior -- who went to jail rather than issue licenses to same-sex couples is now targeting the landmark 2015 ruling.
A decade after catapulting to right-wing stardom, Kim Davis -- the former Rowan County, Kentucky county clerk who chose jail over issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples -- has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its landmark 2015 decision that legalized marriage equality nationwide.
Represented by the anti-LGBTQ Liberty Counsel, Davis has formally asked the nation’s highest court to strip away the right of same-sex couples to marry.
A Mike Huckabee acolyte and four-time married fundamentalist zealot, Davis rose to fame in 2015 when she refused to issue marriage licenses to any couple -- gay or straight -- after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision struck down all state-level bans on same-sex marriage, including Kentucky’s. Ordered to comply, she instead spent six days in jail for contempt of court.
"I was always for IVF. Right from the beginning, as soon as we heard about it.… We’re doing this because we just think it’s great. And we need great children, beautiful children in our country, we actually need them," President Donald Trump said in an August 2024 NBC News interview as he mounted his reelection bid.
He pledged to support free in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, a promise that came just months after the Alabama Supreme Court controversially ruled that frozen embryos created through IVF should be considered "children" under state law.
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