NYU Langone Health said federal prosecutors in Texas have asked for records related to gender-affirming care provided to children, becoming the first hospital system to acknowledge publicly receiving a grand jury subpoena for such information in a federal criminal investigation. In a statement Tuesday, NYU Langone said the subpoena sought details about patients under 18 who received gender-affirming care and the providers who administered it.
The hospital system said it received the subpoena as part of subpoenas issued out of the Northern District of Texas on May 7. NYU Langone said it was among several entities that received similar subpoenas and that it was deciding how to respond.
NYU Langone described the scope of what prosecutors want, saying prosecutors are seeking information covering children who received gender-affirming care from 2020 to 2026, as well as the names of the medical providers. The request marks another step in federal efforts aimed at restricting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, according to the hospital system.
The NYU Langone subpoena was disclosed amid wider litigation over similar federal subpoenas sent to doctors and clinics that provide gender care to minors. Last July, the Justice Department sent more than 20 civil subpoenas to providers, court filings show, saying it was investigating potential “healthcare fraud, false statements and more,” and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said the DOJ was holding accountable medical professionals who she said “mutilated children” in the service of what she called a “warped ideology.”
A judge in the Northern District of Texas recently ruled that Rhode Island Hospital in Providence must comply with one of those subpoenas, seeking records tied to gender-affirming care provided to children. During a federal court hearing in Providence on Tuesday, the NYU Langone subpoena came up several times, and an attorney for the Justice Department declined to say when the grand jury had convened, citing that prosecutors could only address what was already publicly reported.
U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy ordered the government to provide attorneys in the Rhode Island case with the affidavit related to the grand jury because it was now public. Court documents cited in the reporting said that, since the DOJ issued the earlier civil subpoenas last year, at least seven federal courts have agreed to quash or limit the expansive demands, including requests for patient birth dates, Social Security numbers, and addresses.
As providers and hospitals contend with the subpoenas, families filed a class-action lawsuit this week in Maryland’s federal court seeking to block the Justice Department from obtaining the documents. The lawsuit was filed by 11 families, and it is backed by parents of transgender children who received care from hospitals across the United States.
The Justice Department said Tuesday that it does not comment on grand jury investigations. NYU Langone and the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Texas did not immediately return messages seeking comment Tuesday.
LGBTQ+ groups criticized the requests for gender-care information. Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project in New York, said in a statement that the group would not allow “anti-trans extremists to turn our hospitals into hunting grounds,” adding that “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.”