NEW YORK—The hospital system of New York University Langone (NYULH) and other unnamed healthcare institutions have received a grand jury subpoena from the Attorney General’s office in the Justice Department. NYULH is ordered to provide comprehensive information about its gender-affirming care program for minors.
The subpoena includes wide-ranging requests for records of employees directly administering care to patients, supervisors and billing workers, patient identities, indications, clinical assessments and diagnoses, and records of patient care. The subpoena also seeks records of communications with puberty blocker and hormone manufacturers as well as exchanges with the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH).
The demand for records from NYULH marks the first documented grand jury subpoena the Trump administration has served to a hospital providing gender-affirming care for minors. Grand juries are usually assembled when the government is preparing to charge a party for a crime.
New York gender-affirming care providers and patients have historically been safe from out-of-state prosecution by the state’s Shield Laws, but the current federal subpoena is unprecedented. Additionally, the Justice Department served the subpoena from the federal Northern District of Texas court, a court stuffed to the brim with Trump and Republican-appointed justices.
The DOJ’s subpoena was issued despite the fact that NYUHL already cancelled its gender-affirming care program following pressure from the president’s executive order demanding federal departments investigate states and providers supporting trans youth healthcare needs.
LGBTQ+ rights lawyers like Alejandra Caraballo from Harvard University lambasted the decision to subpoena from the North Texas District as “judge and forum shopping,” a practice where litigants pick their preferred courts and justices with the expectation they will rule in their favor.
Shannon Minter from the National Center for LGBTQ Rights described the subpoena as an attempt to threaten providers into withholding transgender healthcare based on “this administration’s ideological opposition to transgender people and to this healthcare.”
The Human Rights Campaign issued a statement criticizing the administration for going after people’s private health records, declaring it “a dangerous escalation in the attacks against healthcare providers.”
A group of activists representing the LGBTQ community and allies protested at Manhattan’s Lower Tweed Courthouse demanding stronger protections against the administration’s onslaught.
NYULH’s public response states it is looking into options about how to proceed with the subpoena, but it has not disclosed whether it will fight the administration’s proceedings or not.
To challenge previous disruptions stemming from Trump’s anti-trans youth healthcare executive order, a coalition of LGBTQ+ and civil rights organizations and individuals—including PFLAG, Lambda Legal, ACLU, and parents of trans children—have filed a lawsuit against the administration. The last update on this case was in October 2025, however, so mobilizing against the current attack is still imperative.
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