May 16: New Yorkers hold a rally in Washington Square Park in response to the federal subpoena issued to NYU Langone seeking confidential patient and provider information related to transgender youth healthcare. Gina M. Randazzo/Zuma
Yet another Trump administration effort to gain access to trans kids’ private health information has been, for the moment, halted. A district judge today handed down a temporary restraining order, preventing the Trump administration from forcing disclosure of the health records of trans children treated at New York University Langone and Mount Sinai hospitals in New York City. The injunction will remain in place at least until July 8.
The US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas sent out a grand jury subpoena to the hospitals seeking confidential information about patients under age 18 according to a statement released by NYU Langone May 11.
The Trump administration spent much of the past year seeking similar information from hospitals across the country via administrative subpoenas, none of which have succeeded in court. “ But undeterred by its disastrous showing in the courts, DOJ decided to issue nearly identical document requests in the form of grand jury subpoenas emanating from the Northern District of Texas,” District Judge Katherine Polk Failla said.
Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, called the subpoena “a blatant attempt to harass and intimidate medical providers based on this administration’s ideological opposition to transgender people and to this healthcare.”
“It’s just an egregious abuse of federal power,” Minter told me at the time. “This is mafia-type behavior.” Three families of trans kids sued in early June, alleging the subpoena violated their children’s rights.
“We’re thankful the court has granted our emergency request to protect the privacy interests of transgender New Yorkers and their families,” said Chase Strangio, Co-Director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project, in a statement.
“For the past year, the Trump administration has not only decided that it knows better than these families and their doctors what their medical needs are, but has also sought to obtain troves of sensitive information about patients in New York.”
