Judge Advises All to Try Quashing Subpoenas Due to DOJ Distrust

A Rhode Island federal judge grew so frustrated with the conduct of the Justice Department—and two Trump-appointed lawyers in particular—that she advised any party subject to a DOJ subpoena to try blocking it.

DOJ “should be prepared to field thousands of motions to quash, tens of thousands maybe, because I don’t know how any party can rely on a conversation with the Department of Justice that they’re working on compliance” given the track of this case, said District Court Judge Mary S. McElroy, near the end of a May 12 hearing in which a pediatric hospital was attempting to thwart the department’s demand for transgender youth medical records.

“I’m not a practitioner, but as a judge I would say to anybody you should be filing motions to quash in every case where the Department of Justice is seeking information and you’re trying to negotiate it,” McElroy continued, according to a transcript, which was added to the docket of a related case Tuesday.

She later described the case as “a cautionary tale.”

McElroy sided with Rhode Island Hospital the day after the hearing in a scathing order nixing the subpoena for gender-affirming care data and blasting prosecutors for misrepresenting and withholding information. The testy hearing goes further in demonstrating the jurist’s condemnation of two DOJ Civil Division officials representing the government. One is Jordan Campbell, who holds a senior role as the deputy assistant attorney general overseeing the administration’s nationwide probes of providers of children with gender dysphoria.

McElroy took particular issue with DOJ’s effort to forum shop the investigation to the Northern District of Texas, where she said department lawyers misled the judge into thinking the hospital had ignored the subpoena for months. In reality, defense lawyers had sought to meet with department lawyers to discuss narrowing the search terms and didn’t receive a reply from DOJ.

“You ghosted them,” McElroy told the DOJ attorneys, criticizing them for failing to provide that detail to Fort Worth-based Judge Reed O’Connor before he granted the department’s request for an order enforcing their subpoena.

She directed most of her ire at lead DOJ attorney Brantley Mayers, a counsel to the head of the Civil Division. McElroy grilled him on his experience, prompting Mayers to acknowledge he’d spent only one month in legal practice following three clerkships before joining the department in November. She routinely interrupted Mayers, including to remind him when he cited case law in an outside venue that she only cared about the First Circuit.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Brantley received his law degree from the University of Florida in 2022 and clerked for Trump-appointed judges Barbara Lagoa of the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and Kathryn Kimball Mizelle of the Middle District of Florida.

McElroy also turned her attention to Campbell, who before joining DOJ last year co-founded “the first and only firm dedicated to exclusively representing detransitioners and victims of radical gender ideology,” according to his government bio. Eric Olshan, a McGuireWoods partner representing the provider, brought up during the hearing that Campbellhad sued Rhode Island Hospital in state and federal court when practicing at his Dallas firm.

Campbell’s history is relevant, Olshan said, because “we’re left wondering, given the nature of our communications with the government, how we wound up in this situation that we’re currently in.”

The judge pressed Campbell on whether the government would still expect the hospital to comply with the subpoena in Texas if she rejects it in Rhode Island, and whether DOJ would try to hold the hospital in contempt.

“We fully intend to comply with whatever order this court issues,” Campbell replied.

In quashing the subpoena the following day, McElroy took a moment to slam the department for staffing the hearing with Mayers and Campbell—without naming them.

When DOJ “attorneys came to this court to explain their conduct, the senior attorney—who was present at many of the events that took place in this case—sat silently by as his counterpart, a junior attorney who has been practicing law for approximately six months and had no relevant information, was forced to answer questions about DOJ’s blatant disregard for the proper course of negotiations,” the judge wrote.

McElroy, a Trump appointee in 2019 who’d previously been nominated by President Barack Obama, is one of multiple judges who’ve been highly critical of the department’s motives in seeking sensitive gender-affirming care records.

Her frustration with DOJ’s attempt to redirect the investigation to the conservative-friendly North Texas—without explaining the nature of the investigation’s ties to that district—was on full display when she tried to get Mayers to be forthcoming about the department’s strategy.

“At least be honest enough to admit that,” McElroy said.

“Admit what, your honor?” Mayers responded.

“That you chose Fort Worth where there’s two judges intentionally knowing that you were going to get a forum, since you had lost seven of these—every single one of them that were filed in other cases—right?” the judge said.