Prosecutors seek NYU hospital information on gender-affirming care for children
A New York hospital system says it received a grand jury subpoena from federal prosecutors in Texas seeking information about children who received gender-affirming care and the medical providers who administered it.
NYU Langone is the first hospital system to publicly acknowledge receiving a subpoena for such records as part of a federal criminal investigation. But the institution said in its statement Tuesday that she was one of several people to receive a subpoena from the Northern District of Texas on May 7. She said she was deciding how to respond.
NYU Langone Health includes seven inpatient facilities and more than 300 locations throughout the New York region and Florida. The hospital system said prosecutors wanted information on patients under 18 who received gender-affirming care between 2020 and 2026, as well as the names of providers.
It’s the latest move in the Trump administration’s efforts to block care for transgender youth. NYU Langone already announced earlier this year that it was ending this type of treatment for transgender children, in the face of funding threats from the federal government.
Last July, the Justice Department sent more than 20 civil subpoenas to doctors and clinics that provide gender-based care to minors, saying it was investigating “health care fraud, misrepresentations and more.” Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said the DOJ held accountable “medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a distorted ideology.”
A federal judge in the Northern District of Texas recently sided with the Justice Department and ruled that Rhode Island Hospital in Providence must comply with one of those subpoenas, seeking records regarding gender-affirming care provided to children.
NYU Langone’s subpoena was brought up several times Tuesday during a federal court hearing in Providence on the cases. A Justice Department lawyer declined to reveal when exactly the grand jury convened, saying he could only speak about what had been publicly reported.
U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy then ordered the DOJ to provide attorneys handling the Rhode Island case with the grand jury affidavit because it was now public.
Since the Justice Department issued the civil subpoenas last year, court documents show that at least seven federal courts have agreed to quash or limit the subpoenas, which required providers to turn over dates of birth, Social Security numbers and addresses of patients who received transgender care.
As doctors and hospitals grapple with these subpoenas, 11 families filed a class-action lawsuit this week seeking to block the DOJ from obtaining the documents. The suit, filed in federal court in Maryland, is supported by families whose transgender children were treated in hospitals across the United States.
The Justice Department said Tuesday it would not comment on grand jury investigations.
NYU Langone and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Tuesday.
LGBTQ+ groups have condemned the latest federal requests for gender protection information.
“We will not allow anti-trans extremists to turn our hospitals into hunting grounds,” Tyler Hack, executive director of the transgender rights group Christopher Street Project in New York, said in a statement. “Playing political games to weaponize Americans’ private health care information is not just an attack on trans people, it’s an attack on every American who enjoys basic patient-provider privacy.”
