Back in February, NYU Langone Health, a major hospital in New York City, announced it was ending support for gender affirming care.
NYU Langone Health canceled all gender-affirming care for minors on Tuesday amid financial threats from the Trump administration, sparking backlash from local politicians and forcing teenage patients to find new providers as local options dwindle…
“Given the recent departure of our medical director, coupled with the current regulatory environment, we made the difficult decision to discontinue our Transgender Youth Health Program,” NYU Langone spokesperson Steve Ritea wrote in a statement to WSN. “We are committed to helping patients in our care manage this change.”
Today we’re learning that the hospital received a criminal subpoena from Texas asking it for information on minors who received gender affirming care over the past six years.
A major New York City hospital system said it had received a grand jury subpoena from a federal prosecutor in Texas demanding information about adolescents who received gender-related medical care during the past six years.
NYU Langone disclosed that it received the subpoena last week and was asked “to provide information pertaining to patients under the age of 18 who received gender-affirming care” between 2020 and 2026. The subpoena also requested the names of NYU Langone medical staff members who provided the treatment between 2020 and 2026…
Several New York hospitals had built robust transgender health practices during the last decade, treating not only adults but adolescents. NYU Langone had one of the most prominent. It once advertised on its website a Transgender Youth Health Program, with treatments including “puberty suppression, hormone therapy and social and emotional support.”
Other hospitals apparently received similar criminal referrals last week but NYU Langone is the first one to announce it publicly. State officials are already urging to hospital to fight the subpoena.
“New York has strong protections in place to protect the privacy of patient records,” Sophie Hamlin, a spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office, said Tuesday. “Every health care institution in New York should seek to protect both patients and providers.”
Activists are also pushing back and demanding that NYU Langone continue offering gender affirming care despite what seems like a looming lawsuit.
The executive director of the Christopher Street Project, a political action committee and nonprofit that was started in response to Mr. Trump’s transgender policies, expressed hope that the hospital and attorney general’s office would fight the subpoena. In the past, the office of New York’s attorney general has encouraged NYU Langone to continue providing transition treatments to adolescents, even in the face of threats from the federal government. The attorney general’s office has said that denying such treatment to trans youth could violate anti-discrimination laws…
“We won’t allow anti-trans extremists to come into New York and steal our patient data and use it to investigate and criminalize trans kids and providers and their parents,” said Tyler Hack, the executive director of the Christopher Street Project.
In reality, the hospital will likely fight this and, depending on what is behind the subpoena, they may succeed in having its impact limited. The same court in Texas previously sent a similar subpoena to a hospital in Rhode Island seeking similar information. The DOJ is still fighting to enforce that subpoena in court.
Yesterday, the Department of Justice’s Enforcement and Affirmative Litigation Branch and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas filed a petition in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas to enforce a subpoena issued to Rhode Island Hospital demanding records related to pediatric sex-rejecting procedures.
According to the filed petition, the Department of Justice served a subpoena under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act on Rhode Island Hospital as part of its investigation into the distribution of certain prescription drugs to minors with gender dysphoria and related disorders, including puberty blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones. To date, Rhode Island Hospital has not complied with the subpoena.
“The Department of Justice expects and demands full compliance with validly issued subpoenas like the one at issue here,” said Brett A. Shumate, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division. “Non-compliance with lawful process is never an option.”
So this is going to drag on but it seems likely that, eventually, NYU Langone will have to turn over some information. However that could still be several months away.
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