In yet another blow to the Department of Justice’s crusade against gender-affirming care, a federal judge in Pittsburgh has firmly shut down efforts to obtain sensitive medical records of transgender minors at UPMC. The ruling came on Christmas Eve.
U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon became the latest in a growing list of federal judges to reject the DOJ’s subpoena targeting youth receiving gender-affirming care. In a sharply worded opinion, Bissoon said the government’s motives reeked of animus, writing that the DOJ’s request “carries more than a whiff of ill intent.”
She didn’t mince words about the nature of the DOJ’s campaign either, pointing directly to the department’s own website, which refers to trans health care as “fraud,” a “barbaric practice,” and “genital mutilation,” to illustrate the ideological bias driving the case. Bissoon noted that the vast majority of gender-affirming care for youth doesn’t involve surgery, making the DOJ’s claims not just misleading, but intentionally inflammatory.
In a footnote, Judge Bissoon raised the alarm on the broader scope of the federal government’s targeting of transgender people.
“The Court is uncertain whether the general public is aware of how broad the government’s campaign is against transgender people,” she wrote, outlining multiple examples of federal hostility toward trans rights.
The lawsuit, originally brought by families of trans youth in response to the subpoena, was met with government arguments claiming the families lacked standing since the records were being sought from UPMC, not the patients themselves. Bissoon wasn’t buying it. She called the government’s timeliness argument “disingenuous” and outright rejected the logic.
Facing repeated defeats in court, the DOJ pivoted on December 16, claiming it would accept anonymized records instead of identifiable patient files. But Bissoon didn’t let them off the hook, framing the about-face as nothing more than a strategic retreat in the face of legal failure.
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Ironically, Bissoon supported her ruling by citing United States v. Skrmetti, the controversial Supreme Court case that opened the door for states to ban gender-affirming care for minors. She pointed out that the DOJ’s actions violate the very legal precedent it once cheered, writing that the government’s sweeping demand “flies in the face” of the Supreme Court’s emphasis on leaving such matters to the states.
The DOJ has now been rebuffed multiple times in court, but it isn’t showing signs of backing off completely.
Meanwhile, the broader right-wing offensive against trans care continues to escalate. Just one day before Bissoon’s ruling, 19 states filed suit to block a proposed federal rule from HHS that would strip funding from any hospital providing gender-affirming care to minors.