Today, June 2, Lambda Legal announced it has filed a lawsuit alongside the ACLU and New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) in order to challenge the federal government’s attempts to seize lists of trans kids who received transition medicine.
The affected hospitals include NYU Langone and Mount Sinai.The lawsuit comes as the federal government has imposed a June 10 deadline.
The suit argues that,
“The Subpoenas are part and parcel of the efforts by the current federal administration to "end" gender-affirming medical care for transgender people, which is part of a larger set of attacks on transgender people across the country."
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Further context comes from statements made by those also involved with the lawsuit via the ACLU.
“These subpoenas are a baseless intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship, demanding medical professionals substitute their expertise for the Trump administration’s politics,” said Elizabeth Gill, Senior Counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project.
Gill continued,
“By weaponizing federal investigations, the administration is trying to scare hospitals into dropping patients and abandoning families. As courts across the country have already told this administration, this heavy-handed overreach has nothing to do with fraud prevention; it is a direct attempt by politicians to interfere with the New York’s exercise of its police power to ensure the health and welfare of its residents, override parental rights, and block families from making their own private healthcare decisions.”
According to their filing, “the Subpoenas seek the identifying and detailed sensitive health information of all transgender persons who received medical care as treatment for their gender dysphoria while they were minors, as well as the identity of their parents.”
In other words, the federal government is unfairly targeting trans youth, trans adults who received care as youth, and supportive parents of trans people.
The Plaintiffs further argued that,
“DOJ's aims are not to impartially enforce the law-no federal law prohibits the provision of gender-affirming medical care to minors, which the U.S. Supreme Court has determined is for the states to regulate-but rather to effectuate the Administration's policy priorities to "end" the gender-affirming medical care, even if coercion is necessary.”
This is a case to watch. The result of the injunctive relief decision will determine whether the executive branch’s efforts to seize lists of trans kids, adults, and parents of trans kids will go through on June 10 or not.
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