DOJ Subpoenas Served on Gender Affirming Care Providers: What Does It Mean?

This summer, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) began issuing administrative subpoenas to healthcare institutions in major cities, including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, who provide gender affirming care to minors. Plainly, these subpoenas are intended to intimidate gender affirming care providers and to dissuade patients and their families from seeking this care. But amidst growing attacks by the Trump administration against transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex communities, what do these subpoenas actually mean for patients and healthcare providers?

What is a subpoena?

A Department of Justice subpoena is a formal demand for records or testimony to obtain information during civil and criminal investigations. The law regarding subpoenas is complicated. Subpoenas are not requests; ignoring or failing to comply with a subpoena has serious consequences.

While subpoenas are powerful, they are not absolute.  Subpoenas can be challenged, or “quashed,” for many procedural or substantive reasons. This includes whether the subpoena’s scope is overly broad; whether the information being sought is privileged or confidential; or whether the subpoena imposes an “undue burden.” Still, even these arguments are complex, involving other considerations like privacy law, HIPAA, or the alleged purpose of the subpoena.

What happened?

In June 2025, the DOJ began issuing administrative subpoenas to doctors and clinics which provide gender affirming care to minors. In its press release in July, the DOJ claims that these subpoenas are being issued in the course of its investigations into “healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.”

While subpoenas are routinely used as part of legal investigations, the subpoenas issued by the DOJ are extremely unusual. The information sought from the targeted providers includes many years’ worth of confidential information belonging to current or past patients, including medical records relating to their physical and mental health, birthdates, Social Security numbers, and home addresses.

These subpoenas were issued to healthcare institutions in many major cities, including the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Boston Children’s Hospital, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), and University of Michigan Health. The subpoena issued to CHOP would require providers to turn over “every writing or record of whatever type” related to the provision of gender affirming care, including:

• Patient communications, including voicemails, emails, and text messages from encrypted hospital platforms
• Patients’ clinical information, including diagnoses, assessments, documentation of informed consent, patient intake forms, and parent authorizations for care
• Personnel files, training manuals, billing records, insurance information, and communications between hospital staff, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and sales representatives of medications used to treat Gender Dysphoria

How are healthcare institutions responding?

Several healthcare institutions are challenging the subpoenas; however, those efforts are largely not visible, as many cases are proceeding under seal and are not accessible by the general public.

Boston Children’s Hospital filed a motion to quash the subpoena, which was granted on September 9, 2025. In his decision, United States District Judge Myong J. Joun writes,

The [Trump administration] has been explicit about its disapproval of the transgender community and its aim to end [gender affirming care]…It is abundantly clear that the true purpose of issuing the subpoena is to interfere with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ right to protect [gender affirming care] within its borders, to harass and intimidate [Boston Children’s Hospital] to stop providing such care, and to dissuade patients from seeking such care.

Ultimately, the Boston Children’s Hospital subpoena was quashed because it failed to show “proper purpose” for the broad requests for information and was motivated “only by bad faith.”

Other healthcare institutions have stopped providing gender affirming care to minors altogether in response to the subpoenas. University of Michigan Health, one of the largest hospital systems in the United States and one of only two gender affirming care providers in Michigan, issued a statement in August 2025 that, “given escalating external threats and risks, we will no longer provide gender affirming hormonal therapies and puberty blocker medications for minors.”

UPMC officially ceased providing gender affirming care on June 30, 2025. Many parents and families of transgender children who were treated at UPMC now fear that it will provide their children’s confidential healthcare information to the DOJ in response to the subpoena.

How are CHOP and affected patients responding?

A subpoena was issued to CHOP on June 11, 2025. While most subpoenas have not been made public, the DOJ requested CHOP’s motion to quash the subpoena to be unsealed – revealing the contents and nature of the subpoena. It includes a seven-page list of requested documents, likely identical to those requested from other institutions.

At this time, CHOP has not provided any requested information relating to patients or its provision of gender affirming care. CHOP is currently challenging the subpoena in court and sent a statement to families of transgender patients in late August, providing in part:

CHOP deeply values patient privacy and the confidentiality of our patients’ health information, and we work hard to protect that information. We have filed legal papers in the Pennsylvania federal district court challenging those parts of the subpoena and emphasized the harm that could result if we were required to disclose patient information in response to this request from the government.

On September 22, 2025, the Public Interest Law Center (PILC) and Ballard Spahr, acting as counsel for a small group of affected CHOP families and patients, filed a separate motion to quash the subpoena with regards to the requests for their private healthcare information. The motion asserts that “[t]hese medical records are the most intimate kind these young patients could have, detailing their mental health, reproductive health, and sexual health.” It describes the scope of the subpoena as a “breathtaking array of sensitive information.” The motion outlines that the subpoena violates patients’ constitutional right to privacy, that the DOJ must have a significant interest to outweigh patients’ privacy interests, and that it was issued for an improper purpose.

What will happen next?

It is clear that the Trump administration intends to intimidate, frighten, and harass institutions and patients out of providing or seeking gender affirming care. While litigation challenging the subpoenas will continue to play out, it is important for affected individuals and families to keep up with updates and new information.

The ACLU, Lambda Legal, and the Transgender Law Center have released a fact sheet regarding the DOJ subpoenas, accessible here.

At this time, PILC is directly representing a small number of affected CHOP families and patients. PILC has asked the Court for widespread relief and that the subpoena be quashed with regards to all patient records. However, if the Court is unwilling to grant relief to affected patients and their families which have not formally registered their objections, PILC plans to request that the Court create a process to notify families and to register such objections. Interested individuals may want to register for the Public Interest Law Center’s newsletter to stay updated on the case’s progress.