Civil rights leaders: We must protect trans medical privacy
Civil rights leaders: We must protect trans medical privacy
https://www.advocate.com/politics/national/doj-subpoenas-nyu-hrc
Publish Date: 2026-05-20 16:48:00
Source Domain: www.advocate.com
National LGBTQ+ civil rights leaders are sounding the alarm after Trump’s Department of Justice criminally subpoenaed NYU Langone and several other hospitals for the names of transgender patients who were minors when they received gender-affirming care.
Transgender rights advocates across the country are urging medical institutions to not comply with the DOJ by refusing to release sensitive medical information about trans minors to federal courts. In a press conference on May 19 hosted by the Human Rights Campaign, representatives from Planned Parenthood and AIDS United as well as parents of trans children negatively impacted by such breaches of medical privacy spoke on the consequences of sharing confidential patient information.
“For half a century, abortion opponents have been executing a strategy to replace our reproductive rights with their beliefs,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Plan, said. “The weaponization of private health care information is one of their most tried and true tactics. The specifics vary of course, but the goal is always the same: Interfering with private decisions they don’t like. For this administration and their allies, surveillance, subpoenas, and criminal prosecutions are all just instruments of control.”
The calls for intervention come after months of mounting pressure from the Trump administration on medical institutions to bow to its anti-trans agenda. NYU patients were alerted on May 11 to a subpoena issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the North District of Texas, which requested the names of medical providers in addition to identifying information for trans youth patients seen from 2020 to 2026.
The subpoena sought extensive patient information related to gender-affirming care, intensifying fears among advocates that the federal government is attempting to build a nationwide apparatus for investigating trans health care providers and families. Just four days later, Texas…
