A federal judge in Pittsburgh is again rejecting an attempt by the U.S. Department of Justice to access medical records of young people seeking gender-affirming care.
In an order Monday, Judge Cathy Bissoon reaffirmed her December denial of the DOJ’s subpoena to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh for records and rejected the DOJ’s offer to accept anonymized records.
“The patients have persuaded the Court that true and effective anonymization cannot be achieved. To the extent the DOJ has urged trust, moreover, it must understand why its assurances are cold comfort,” Bissoon wrote.
Judges in Philadelphia, Colorado, and Washington state have also quashed DOJ subpoenas into medical records of young transgender patients, saying the agency does not have the authority to do so.
The Pittsburgh case is distinct because it was the first challenge brought by patients, rather than a health care system. UPMC has not commented on the proceedings beyond highlighting the language in recent court filings that indicates the health system’s legal team has had conversations with the Justice Department, and that it has not produced any of the requested information to the department while the matter is pending in court.
The Public Interest Law Center, which represents the patients and their families along with the law firm Ballard Spahr, said this case is also the first time a court has ruled on the legitimacy of the request for “allegedly anonymized records.”
The law center reports patients in Pittsburgh argued the subpoena was “improperly motivated, overly broad, and harmful to the patients involved.”
In her order, Bissoon noted gender-affirming care for minors is legal in Pennsylvania and that the DOJ’s request would usurp the state’s oversight of the medical profession.
“[DOJ’s] rhetoric regarding gender-affirming care reflects callous indifference, if not abject cruelty. There is more than a ‘whiff’ of ill-intent. Arguably, it is closer to a stench,” she wrote.
UPMC Children’s is one of more than 20 facilities and doctors to receive subpoenas from the Justice Department last year seeking information about trans patients receiving gender-affirming care and their guardians and providers. It received the subpoena about a month after UPMC terminated nearly all gender-affirming health services for trans patients under 19, other than behavioral health support.