Governor Josh Shapiro of Abington Township has joined a 31-page filing in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against a federal subpoena seeking the private medical records of transgender youth.
Shapiro’s claim, which includes attorneys general of 14 states, asserts that hospitals like the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) “provide essential and life-saving care to thousands of people every year, including gender-affirming care to individuals under the age of 19.”
The claim says that the subpoena “demands highly confidential patient information without justification” and “would allow the government to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship and erode the confidence patients have that their medical records will be kept private.”
It continues:
In addition, it seeks to intimidate medical providers from offering critical, medically necessary health care. And it rests on a flawed legal justification that would intrude on the States’ authority to regulate the practice of medicine within their borders. If enforced, the subpoena would place medical providers and hospital administrators in the crosshairs of civil and criminal enforcement mechanisms, including prosecutions, merely for providing essential health care. DOJ’s baseless attempt to sweep the routine prescription and administration of medications for off-label use into federal criminal prohibitions, all in pursuit of its stated goal of ending gender-affirming care, will cause profound disruptions across the entire medical field.
The federal court gave the Department of Justice until November 4 to respond. The full document is below:
In July, the U.S. Department of Justice subpoenaed more than 20 doctors and clinics (including CHOP) that have been involved in transgender medical care. In August, Shapiro joined 15 states and Washington, D.C. in a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s attempts to eliminate gender-affirming healthcare for transgender individuals under age 19.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, CHOP “runs one of the nation’s largest clinics providing medical care and mental health support for transgender and gender-nonbinary children and teens and their families. Each year, hundreds of new families seek care at CHOP’s Gender and Sexuality Development Program, created in 2014.”
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