Federal prosecutors seek NYU hospital information on gender-affirming care for children

A New York hospital system says it received a grand jury subpoena from federal prosecutors in Texas seeking information about children who received gender-affirming care and the medical providers who administered it.

NYU Langone is the first hospital system to publicly acknowledge receiving a subpoena for such records as part of a federal criminal investigation. But the institution said in its statement Tuesday it was one of several that received a subpoena out of the Northern District of Texas on May 7. It said it was deciding on how to respond.

NYU Langone Health includes seven inpatient facilities and more than 300 locations in the New York City area and Florida. The hospital system said prosecutors want information on patients under 18 who received gender-affirming care from 2020 to 2026, as well as the names of the providers.

It is the latest move in the Trump administration’s efforts to block care for transgender youths. NYU Langone had already announced earlier this year that it was ending such treatment for transgender kids amid funding threats from the federal government.

Last July, the Justice Department sent more than 20 civil subpoenas to doctors and clinics that provide gender care to minors, saying it was investigating “healthcare fraud, false statements and more.” Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said the DOJ was holding accountable “medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology.”

A federal judge in the Northern District of Texas recently sided with the Justice Department that Rhode Island Hospital in Providence must comply with one of those subpoenas, seeking records surrounding gender-affirming care provided to children.

The NYU Langone subpoena came up several times Tuesday during a federal court hearing in Providence on those records. An attorney for the Justice Department declined to disclose when exactly the grand jury had convened, saying that they could only speak to what had been publicly reported.

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy then ordered the DOJ to provide the attorneys in the Rhode Island case with the affidavit related to the grand jury because it was now public.

Since the Justice Department issued the civil subpoenas last year, court documents show that at least seven federal courts have agreed to quash or limit the expansive subpoenas, which demanded that providers hand over the birth dates, Social Security numbers and addresses of patients who received transgender care.

As doctors and hospitals grapple with those subpoenas, 11 families this week filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to block the DOJ from obtaining the documents. The lawsuit, filed in Maryland’s federal court, is backed by families who have transgender children who have received care from hospitals across the U.S.

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 condemned the latest federal requests for gender care information.

“We will not allow anti-trans extremists to turn our hospitals into hunting grounds,” Tyler Hack, executive director of the transgender rights group the Christopher Street Project in New York, 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.”