Rhode Island Hospital has started sending records related to trans youth patients getting gender-affirming care to the court of federal Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas, in order to comply with his recent order for the documents.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) demanded the records even though there is no formal investigation into the hospital, and went to O’Connor’s court to sign off on its subpoena. Rhode Island Hospital turned to a federal judge in Rhode Island, Judge Mary McElroy, to block the order, and she accused the DOJ of “forum shopping” by going halfway across the country to Judge O’Connor to back their subpoena, which she quashed.
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McElroy noted the political nature of the DOJ’s investigation, including Donald Trump’s previous statements about wanting to end gender-affirming care for trans youth. She also criticized the DOJ for not going to her and instead going to O’Connor for their subpoena, saying that they thought he’d be “friendly to [the DOJ’s] political positions.” O’Connor is one of the most anti-LGBTQ+ federal judges in the country.
But earlier this week, O’Connor circumvented the Rhode Island judge’s decision and even ordered the hospital to stop seeking relief from McElroy’s court. He demanded that the hospital send him the trans kids’ medical records directly.
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Rhode Island’s child advocate, who is in charge of defending children’s interests in the state, appealed to a federal court in Boston. The DOJ responded by saying that it would no longer demand identifying information about the trans kids who sought care at Rhode Island Hospital. The appeals court denied the petition to overturn Judge O’Connor’s order, citing the DOJ’s amended request for anonymized information.
The DOJ has been seeking such records from hospitals across the country, and multiple federal judges have already quashed their subpoenas. Critics of the administration say that this is just a harassment campaign, intended to push hospitals to stop providing gender-affirming care to trans youth, which remains legal in about half of the country, and to scare trans youth out of getting medical care by making their private medical records public.
“DOJ issued the subpoena as part of a coordinated campaign by the Trump Administration to eliminate access to medical care for gender dysphoria – lifesaving care that is recognized as medically necessary by every major medical association – even where it is expressly protected by state law, as it is in Rhode Island,” the Rhode Island Child Advocate said earlier this month.
“The records at issue include the most intimate details of vulnerable children’s lives, including their identities, diagnoses, gender identity, mental-health history, family circumstances, foster-care information, parent or guardian information, clinical assessments, consent records, and treatment histories,” they added.
The DOJ claims that it needs to review all of these records for evidence of “misbranding or fraudulent billing” and whether the hospital attempted to “defraud or mislead” while providing gender-affirming care.
The records the DOJ is asking for date back to 2020, and Rhode Island Hospital said it could take months to comply with O’Connor’s order, Ocean State Media reports.
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