DOJ Escalates War on Trans Youth Healthcare With Criminal Subpoenas

In an escalation of its efforts to criminalize and eradicate trans healthcare, Donald Trump’s administration has sent its first known criminal subpoenas to hospitals that have provided gender-affirming care for young trans people. 

New York University Langone received a criminal grand jury subpoena last week from the US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas demanding information about teens who received care from the hospital’s now-shuttered trans youth health program, as well as information on the medical staff who provided that care. 

In accordance with a New York state shield law, the hospital posted a public notice to inform affected patients. The notice also said “several” other institutions had received similar subpoenas, which the hospital said demands “information pertaining to patients under the age of 18 who received gender affirming care” between 2020 and 2026.

Previous administrative subpoenas for confidential patient information have been reliably quashed in courts around the country as blatantly unconstitutional, illegal intrusions into patient privacy. So far, these have been related only to civil investigations. The Langone subpoena means that the federal government has now launched a criminal investigation into trans youth healthcare providers, and in Northern Texas, a judicial district prone to extreme, right-wing decisions. 

It appears that providers, not the trans patients or their guardians, are the target of the criminal investigation. Since federal grand juries are the black boxes of the criminal legal system, little information is available about the details of the case. It is not even publicly known what charges the prosecutors could be pursuing. The subpoena demands sweeping information including medical records relating to any patients under 18 who received gender-affirming treatments, including puberty blockers, hormone treatments, or any other “clinical services.” What we do know for certain is that resisting every government demand here is the only acceptable path forward. 

When it comes to healthcare providers, New York’s Shield Law is specifically in place as a protection from out-of-state prosecution. But the law has not yet been robustly tested against a federal case. 

“The hospital may try to fight the subpoena, in whole or in part, in court — but because the federal government is strategically pursuing the case in one of the most conservative courts in the country, Langone faces an uphill battle,” S. Baum wrote in the trans news and advocacy site Erin in the Morning. “This round of litigation could also put the efficacy of Shield Laws to the test.”

The Justice Department’s aim, whether or not the grand jury leads to prosecutions, is to further intimidate and harass healthcare providers and hospital administrators nationwide into preemptively ending services for trans young people. Many institutions, including NYU Langone, have already complied and stopped providing such care. Convening the grand jury is yet another direct and immediate attack on trans kids and adults, and a threat to bodily autonomy and medical confidentiality more broadly.

We also know by now that the Constitution or our country’s laws are no constraint on the Trump administration. Prosecutors and lawmakers will continue to throw everything they can against the wall until something sticks to establish a new political-legal reality — one usually achieved after a case winds its way up to a favorable federal judge, and eventually the far-right Supreme Court. 

Meanwhile, NYU Langone has shown itself to be an easy target. In response to threats from the federal government last year to withhold funding, the hospital ended its Transgender Youth Health Program. Despite the fact that a federal court in April ruled that the government cannot withhold funding over trans healthcare provision, more than 40 hospital systems have stopped providing necessary medical care to trans youth based on the Trump regime’s threats. 

The fact that Langone already bent to Trump’s demands by shuttering the program but is still facing a potential criminal probe only proves the folly of compliance. Should the hospital, or any other hospital system, supply federal prosecutors with patient’s or worker’s personal information, patients would be well within their rights to sue for HIPAA violations and potentially even civil rights violations given the discriminatory nature of the request. Patients and their families can also file a motion against the subpoena — a precedent that has been set when it comes to administrative subpoenas asking for trans patients’ information. 

Earlier this year, for example, the families of six trans teens who had received treatment at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles filed a motion to quash an administrative subpoena on behalf of themselves and more than 3,000 other transgender youth patients and families whose identities and private medical information the subpoena demanded. A settlement was reached, in which the government withdrew the subpoena requests seeking patient-identifying information and instructed Children’s Hospital to redact all such information from any documents produced.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas — from the same district where the criminal grand jury is empanelled — ruled earlier this month that Rhode Island Hospital in Providence must comply with a Justice Department administrative subpoena for trans youth patient information, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and medical records. In response, the Rhode Island Office of Child Advocate filed an emergency motion to quash the request. In a hearing over the motion in a Providence court, U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy slammed the Justice Department for conducting a “fishing expedition” by seeking medical records and patient information in a scrambling effort to criminalize healthcare provision; she also said the case was quite clearly “shopped” to Texas. 

For institutions and individuals, the stakes for resisting a criminal grand jury subpoena are higher. Individuals can be jailed and fined for the length of the grand jury in order to compel them to testify, and institutions can be slapped with hefty fines. But the consequences of giving in are graver still: Hospitals that capitulate to these demands could be subject to costly patient class action over privacy and rights violations. Institutions that hand over information are also aiding the potential criminal prosecution of medical care providers — an attack on the entire medical profession.

“If NYU Langone and other providers turn the confidential data of their patients over to the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for Northern Texas, everyone’s privacy, everyone’s healthcare, everyone’s civil rights are compromised,” Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller and congressional candidate, wrote on Bluesky.

In March, a federal court ruled that a case brought by Columbia University students could proceed against the university. The lawsuit argues the university became a “third-party collaborator” in unconstitutional actions when it supplied the names and disciplinary records of students involved in Palestine solidarity organizing. The court determined Columbia could be found liable as a “state actor” for acting under government coercion to suppress student speech. Students and civil rights advocates sued the school for handing over student information in response to a congressional subpoena. While a civil, rather than a criminal, case, the finding should make institutions reflect on their readiness to comply with discriminatory and unconstitutional requests from this administration. 

“If the calculus before was that it’s better to comply with the federal government because it is either face saving or economically saving for these private institutions, now there’s the counterbalance: If you capitulate, you’ve actually opened yourself up to liability for selling out your constituents,” civil rights attorney and CUNY law professor Zal Shroff, who is representing plaintiffs in the case against Columbia, told me. 

Given that a federal grand jury subpoena is itself explicitly coercive, it’s unclear whether exactly the same legal claim could be made against NYU should it comply with the government’s demands. Shroff noted, “It may be that they are seeking to use the criminal process to avoid what has been found in the civil process,” but that nonetheless, “legal consequences work in multiple ways” when it comes to people’s ability to challenge private entities for their compliance with the administration’s harms. Continued complicity with Trump’s regime, however, has a known result. 

“NYU caved and ended care and they’re still being hit with a grand jury subpoena. It’s incredibly clear that no amount of preemptive compliance will stop this attack,” Harvard Law instructor Alejandra Caraballo wrote on Bluesky. “You either fight or you will be destroyed by this administration. Caving will not save you.”