Judge Blasts DOJ, Blocks Transgender Care Records Release

A federal judge quashed a Justice Department administrative subpoena seeking hospital records on transgender children, saying prosecutors “misrepresented and withheld information” from two district courts.

By nixing the subpoena and blocking DOJ from seeking or obtaining any of the records it covered, Judge Mary S. McElroy’s Wednesday order in the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island effectively nullifies an April 30 enforcement order DOJ obtained from Judge Reed O’Connor in the Northern District of Texas. O’Connor directed a Rhode Island hospital to comply with the document request.

DOJ’s petition in O’Connor’s court followed a series of losses in other district courts in its investigation into pediatric providers for treating minors with gender dysphoria. The tactic of turning to sympathetic single-judge divisions, often called “judge shopping,” is part of a playbook that’s been particularly successful for Republicans in Texas.

McElroy took department lawyers to task for that “obvious effort to shield it’s recent investigative tactics—previously rejected by every other court to review them—from this Court’s review, in favor of a distant forum that DOJ deems friendly to its political positions.”

She agreed with the Child Advocate for the State of Rhode Island, the state agency tasked with protecting the rights of children that petitioned to block the subpoena, that enforcement would violate young patients’ privacy.

“DOJ’s request for intimate medical details from one of this country’s most vulnerable populations constitutes a drastic overreach of its investigative authority,” she wrote.

Though she said her decision was based only on the law and how it applies to DOJ’s administrative subpoena, McElroy also criticized DOJ’s conduct in the proceeding. She said department personnel misled the Texas court on the investigation’s ties to the state, the Rhode Island hospital’s communications with DOJ, and the department’s need for “patient-level” documentation rather than anonymized data.

“The discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ’s tactics in this case is unsettling,” she said.

The case is In Re: Motion to Quash Administrative Subpoena to Rhode Island Hospital, D.R.I., No. 1:26-mc-7, petition granted 5/13/26.