In a ruling issued from the bench, a judge for the United States District of the Southern District of New York has granted a request from transgender people and their families for a temporary restraining order blocking the disclosure of plaintiffs’ and class members’ medical information pursuant to subpoenas issued by the Trump administration to hospitals in New York City.
“Today’s order from the court is a victory for the basic privacy of our clients and all families like theirs across New York City. It is no secret that this administration will use every lever in its power to attack transgender people and fulfill its misguided goal to ‘end’ gender-affirming medical care–care that is legal and protected in New York State. Using subpoenas to attain the identities and sensitive health information of transgender young people to effectuate such goals should send chills down the spine of every American. Our laws and our Constitution recognize that we all have a right to confidentiality about the most intimate and private information about ourselves,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, Senior Counsel and Health Care Strategist at Lambda Legal. “Whether a young person receives any type of medical care is a decision for that patient, their family, and their doctor, not for political appointees to decide, interfere with, or know. The government cannot abuse its powers to violate the constitutional rights of transgender young people and their families. It is an enormous relief for these families that the court has stopped them from doing so as this case proceeds.”
“We’re thankful the court has granted our emergency request to protect the privacy interests of transgender New Yorkers and their families,” said Chase Strangio, Co-Director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project. “Patients and families trust their doctors with their most intimate, private information and should trust in turn that this information will be protected from impermissible and harassing demands for disclosure from the federal government or anyone else. For the past year, the Trump administration has not only decided that it knows better than these families and their doctors what their medical needs are, but has also sought to obtain troves of sensitive information about patients in New York. We will continue to fight on behalf of these families and the fundamental liberty of all transgender New Yorkers and those who come here to seek needed medical care.”
“New York’s laws recognize that transgender youth deserve fundamental privacy protections for their sensitive medical records and unobstructed access to the care they need,” said Bobby Hodgson, Deputy Legal Director at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “As the Trump administration tries to bully transgender youth, scare families, and intimidate healthcare providers into dropping their patients, we’re thankful the court found these tactics are likely unconstitutional and put a stop to them here in New York.”
In May 2026, NYU Langone Hospitals received a subpoena purportedly under the authority of a federal grand jury in Fort Worth, Texas, which demanded that they turn over the identities and sensitive health information of any patient who had received medical treatment for gender dysphoria while they were under 18 years old from NYU Langone, from January 2020 through May 2026. Other healthcare institutions in New York City, including Mount Sinai Health System, may have received similar subpoenas, though the nature of these is unclear.
The grand jury subpoenas followed a year-long effort by the Department of Justice to obtain this same information from hospitals across the country through administrative subpoenas—efforts that were repeatedly blocked by at least eight federal district courts. One court dismissed the government’s reasoning as a “smokescreen,” while another concluded that DOJ “issued the subpoena first and searched for a justification second.”
In June 2026, a lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three families with transgender youth and two transgender young adults who were minors when they began care. It requests a temporary restraining order blocking DOJ from violating the patients’ constitutional privacy rights by obtaining the identifying and sensitive health information as part of their purported investigation into unspecified health offenses through the subpoena to NYU Langone and any other similar subpoenas to healthcare institutions in New York City, including Mt. Sinai, that provide or have provided gender-affirming medical care to transgender minors. All plaintiffs have filed under pseudonyms to maintain their privacy and anonymity.
The lawsuit asks the court to protect “all individuals who received any medical treatment for gender dysphoria, … while they were under eighteen years of age, from January 1, 2020, through May 5, 2026, at a healthcare institution located in New York City, including NYU Langone Hospitals (and any other NYU entity) and Mount Sinai Health System.”
The plaintiffs argue that the Department of Justice’s demands to access this identifying and sensitive health information violate their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights to privacy and to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The plaintiffs also sued NYU Langone to prevent its release of information protected by doctor-patient privilege under New York state law.
Read more about the lawsuit here: https://lambdalegal.org/case/coe-v-blanche/