A federal judge in Pittsburgh just handed the U.S. Department of Justice a very public, very pointed rejection, and the language she used? Not subtle.
Chief U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon ruled Monday that the DOJ cannot force UPMC to hand over records, even anonymized ones, for minor patients who received gender-affirming care at UPMC. And in her four-page order, she didn’t mince words.
The DOJ’s rhetoric around transgender healthcare, she wrote, reflects “callous indifference, if not abject cruelty.” She went even further, saying the situation carries more than “a whiff” of ill intent, “arguably, it is closer to a stench.”
Last summer, the DOJ issued a sweeping subpoena demanding detailed medical histories, diagnoses, and treatment plans for patients who received gender-affirming care at UPMC, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The request was part of what the federal government described as a nationwide investigation into off-label drug use and potential billing fraud.
The subpoena was challenged, and in December Judge Bissoon quashed it. The DOJ then scaled back its request, asking only for anonymized records. The court gave both sides time to argue whether that would be legally acceptable.
This week’s ruling shuts that door, too.
Bissoon determined that “true and effective anonymization” simply isn’t possible when it comes to deeply personal, detailed medical records, especially involving minors.
And she made clear she does not trust the DOJ’s assurances that sensitive data would be handled responsibly.
“To the extent the DOJ has urged trust,” she wrote, its promises are “cold comfort.”
The Justice Department has issued similar subpoenas to at least 20 hospital systems nationwide. But so far? No federal court has enforced them.
In fact, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania also denied a similar request involving the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Judge Bissoon didn’t stop at procedural arguments. She directly challenged the DOJ’s broader framing of transgender healthcare, writing that if the department claims to defend the Constitution and protect the “God-given rights” of Americans, transgender Americans have every reason to question whether that promise includes them.
The DOJ has already filed an appeal to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, meaning this fight isn’t over.