On August 20, 2025, the nation’s leading newspapers broke a story that has sent shockwaves through the medical, legal, and LGBTQ+ communities: the Department of Justice (DOJ), under the Trump administration and led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, has issued more than 20 sweeping subpoenas to hospitals and clinics across the country, demanding highly confidential patient records connected to gender-affirming health care for minors. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was among the first named in court filings, with the DOJ requesting a trove of sensitive documents dating back to January 2020. These include not only clinical notes and billing records, but also birth dates, Social Security numbers, home addresses, voicemails, emails, encrypted messages—even records of Zoom meetings between providers.
According to The Washington Post and The New York Times, the DOJ’s subpoenas are breathtaking in their scope, seeking “every writing or record of whatever type” related to the provision of hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and gender transition surgery to anyone under 19. The requests extend to documentation of diagnoses, clinical assessments, informed consent forms, parental authorizations, personnel files, training manuals, billing and insurance records, and communications with pharmaceutical companies. In July, Attorney General Bondi announced the subpoenas publicly, stating, “Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice.”
The stated rationale from the DOJ is an investigation into “healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.” In April, Bondi issued a DOJ memo directing prosecutors to use fraud statutes and even the federal ban on female genital mutilation to investigate providers, implementing President Trump’s executive order Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation. Parts of this executive order have already been blocked by federal courts, but the administration’s campaign continues in earnest. In June, the FBI went so far as to ask the public to report tips on any hospitals or practitioners offering transition-related surgeries to minors. Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent letters to nine hospitals in May, demanding detailed information on “medical interventions for gender dysphoria in children” and linking federal funding to compliance with new, stricter quality standards.
Legal experts and advocates have decried the DOJ’s actions as an unprecedented intrusion on patient privacy and a direct threat to the ability of transgender youth to access medically necessary care. Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law, called the subpoenas “a breathtakingly invasive government overreach.” Elizabeth Gill of the American Civil Liberties Union echoed these concerns, warning that targeting trans youth in this manner “could open the door to similar attacks on any community the administration decides it doesn’t approve of.”
All major U.S. medical associations—including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, and the American Psychiatric Association—stand in support of gender-affirming care for minors, describing it as evidence-based, effective, and lifesaving. Decades of research, as highlighted by PBS NewsHour and recent studies in JAMA Pediatrics, show that such care improves mental health outcomes and reduces rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide among transgender youth. Notably, a study analyzing insurance data from over 5 million adolescents between 2018 and 2022 found that fewer than 0.1 percent received gender-affirming medications. “We are not seeing inappropriate use of this sort of care,” said Landon Hughes, a Harvard public health researcher and lead author of the study.
Despite this medical consensus, the federal government’s aggressive campaign is already having a chilling effect. According to The Washington Post and The Advocate, more than a dozen hospitals, including major programs in states where gender-affirming care for minors remains legal, have scaled back or shut down their services in recent weeks. Most of these are in Democratic-leaning states. Parents of transgender youth now find themselves in a race against time, scrambling to secure new doctors before prescriptions for puberty blockers or hormones run out. One Midwestern doctor, compelled to turn over a work cellphone after their hospital received a DOJ subpoena, confided to reporters, “Frankly, I’m looking over my shoulder driving home.”
The DOJ’s subpoenas do not discriminate between states that have banned gender-affirming care for minors and those where it remains legal. Seven individuals familiar with the subpoenas, speaking anonymously to The Washington Post due to fear of retribution, confirmed that providers in both types of states have been targeted. The federal government appears to be building cases against medical professionals, alleging violations of civil and criminal statutes—even when the care provided was legal under state law.
This federal push comes on the heels of significant legal shifts. In June 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. Skrmetti, upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, ruling the law does not discriminate based on sex. Legal scholars warn that this decision could pave the way for similar restrictions on care for transgender adults in the future. Leah Litman, a constitutional law professor at the University of Michigan, observed that the Court’s conservative majority “is laying the groundwork for even broader restrictions.”
The administration’s stance is clear. President Trump, upon returning to office in January 2025, signed executive orders to end federal support for transition-related care for anyone under 19 and to prohibit federal funds from supporting “gender ideology.” Another order proclaims that the U.S. recognizes only two unchangeable sexes. While federal judges have blocked parts of these orders, the overall direction is unmistakable: a determined effort to roll back protections for transgender youth.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, under Administrator Mehmet Oz, has cited a 400-page report from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that questions the evidence supporting gender-affirming care for minors. The report advocates greater reliance on psychotherapy rather than medical intervention. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for providers to update their regulations and protocols to align with these recommendations.
Not everyone is standing by quietly. A coalition of 17 states and the District of Columbia has filed suit, arguing that the DOJ is unlawfully intimidating providers and trampling on state authority to regulate medicine. A former senior DOJ official told The Advocate that Congress “has not just the right but the obligation to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch” and to ensure compliance with constitutional and statutory limitations.
With more than half of U.S. states now banning gender-affirming care for youth, the landscape for trans health care is shifting rapidly. The effects are immediate and personal—families are left in limbo, doctors fear prosecution, and the nation’s medical community watches anxiously as the debate over privacy, evidence-based care, and federal power intensifies.
As the legal battles unfold and hospitals weigh their next moves, one thing is clear: the fight over gender-affirming care for minors in America is far from over, and the outcome will have lasting consequences for patients, providers, and the very meaning of medical privacy.
