Copyright The New York Times
A federal judge in Seattle has rejected a Justice Department effort to obtain confidential patient information from a provider of gender-affirming care, accusing the agency of “prosecutorial coercion” and of failing to conduct an investigation in good faith. The ruling, filed on Monday, was a scathing rebuke from a federal judge over an extraordinary attempt by the Justice Department to secure personal data in service of what it said was a bid to determine whether certain providers had committed fraud or made false claims about its services. In July, the department issued a subpoena to QueerDoc, which provides telehealth and prescription services in 10 states, asking for five years of sensitive data on patients and providers. The demand was part of a barrage of 20 subpoenas sent to hospitals and other health care entities across the nation that provide gender-affirming care. In a 16-page order, Judge Jamal N. Whitehead of Federal District Court in the Western District of Washington, said the government’s real purpose was to intimidate providers into dropping or paring back care to comply with policies targeting the transgender community that had the backing of President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi. “D.O.J. has abandoned good-faith investigation in favor of policy enforcement through prosecutorial coercion,” wrote Judge Whitehead, who was appointed to the bench by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “When a federal agency issues a subpoena not to investigate legal violations but to intimidate and coerce providers into abandoning lawful medical care, it exceeds its legitimate authority and abuses the judicial process,” he added. A Justice Department spokeswoman would not say whether the government planned to appeal. The department will turn to every tool possible “to protect innocent children from being mutilated under the guise of ‘care,’” she said in an email. QueerDoc’s legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Judge Whitehead cited Ms. Bondi’s provocative public statements about transgender people and gender-related medical care as proof that the department’s actions were impelled by political and policy motives, rather than a legitimate effort to investigate fraud. Judge Whitehead described that statement as an attempt “to sway public sentiment” about gender-affirming care providers. “Such conduct appears calculated to intimidate rather than investigate,” he wrote. He did, however, reject QueerDoc’s motion to seal proceedings in the case from public view, after the group argued that disclosing details of the legal fight would compromise the safety and privacy of patients, their families, physicians and staff. The Justice Department subpoenas, which tried to pierce the powerful confidentiality shield of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, were aimed at hospitals and other entities that provide gender-related treatments to minors. The action, initiated by lawyers with the consumer protection unit of the department’s civil division, was a sharp escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to limit transgender medical care. Officials briefed on the investigation have described the move as a fact-finding mission, intended to determine whether any laws have been broken and kick-start negotiations with the providers over transgender treatment policy. The subpoenas came after a Supreme Court decision that effectively shielded state laws banning youth gender medicine in nearly half the country. Hospitals and doctors in other states, where legislatures are unlikely to enact such bans, have faced increasing threats from the federal government. In response, a small number of clinics have limited their treatments or closed altogether. In May, nine leading children’s hospitals across the country received letters from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services demanding data on revenue from pediatric gender treatments and the rates of regret among patients, according to a person with knowledge of the effort. Those letters applied explicit financial pressure to the hospitals. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the agency, wrote that it “has an obligation to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars.” In June, the F.B.I. put out a call to the public to report hospitals and doctors who were performing surgeries on minors.
