Federal prosecutors in Texas have taken their investigation of gender-affirming care for transgender minors into criminal terrain, issuing a grand jury subpoena to NYU Langone Health for years of patient records and provider identities. The demand, made public by the hospital system on Tuesday, marks the first known instance of a criminal subpoena in the Justice Department’s yearlong pursuit of medical records related to youth gender care — a campaign that had previously relied on civil subpoenas and that has met stiff resistance from doctors, hospitals, and LGBTQ+ advocacy groups.
NYU Langone disclosed the May 7 subpoena in a brief statement, saying it was “one of several” healthcare providers to receive one from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. The subpoena seeks information on all patients under age 18 who received gender-affirming care between 2020 and 2026, as well as the names of the clinicians who provided it. The New-York-based health system, which operates multiple hospitals in the New York metropolitan area and Florida, said it was still deciding how to respond. NYU Langone had already announced earlier this year that it would stop offering such care to transgender children, citing federal funding threats.
The subpoena surfaced during a federal court hearing Tuesday in Providence, Rhode Island, where U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy is overseeing a dispute over a separate civil subpoena issued last year to Rhode Island Hospital. An attorney for the Justice Department declined to say when the grand jury had been convened, telling the judge he could only discuss what had been publicly reported. McElroy then ordered the department to turn over the affidavit supporting the grand jury subpoena to the lawyers in the Rhode Island case, because it was now public.
The Justice Department’s interest in youth gender care has been escalating since last July, when it sent more than 20 civil subpoenas to physicians and clinics across the country, citing potential “healthcare fraud, false statements and more.” Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi described the probe as the department holding accountable “medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology.” Several recipients challenged those subpoenas, and at least seven federal courts have already quashed or sharply limited the requests, which in some cases demanded birth dates, Social Security numbers, and home addresses of patients.
The new criminal subpoena comes as 11 families with transgender children filed a class-action lawsuit Monday in federal court in Maryland, seeking to block the Justice Department from obtaining their medical records. The families, whose children have received care at hospitals across the United States, argue that the subpoenas violate patient privacy and exceed the government’s authority. The Justice Department said Tuesday that it does not comment on grand jury investigations. NYU Langone and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
LGBTQ+ groups condemned the latest federal demand as an unprecedented intrusion into private medical decisions. “We will not allow anti-trans extremists to turn our hospitals into hunting grounds,” Tyler Hack, executive director of the New York-based transgender rights group the Christopher Street Project, said in a statement. “Playing political games to weaponize Americans’ private healthcare information is not just an attack on trans people — it is an attack on every single American who benefits from basic patient-provider privacy.”
The case is unfolding as the Trump administration has steadily tightened restrictions on transgender healthcare for minors, including through executive orders, funding threats, and legal action. The administration has argued that such care is experimental and harmful, a position that major medical associations dispute. A grand jury subpoena represents a significant escalation, because it carries the force of a criminal investigation and can seek records without the same level of judicial pre-clearance that civil subpoenas require.