NYU Langone Health received a two-week extension on a federal subpoena to identify children who received gender-affirming care, marking a June 24 deadline, after transgender patients argued the demand violates their constitutional rights. 

Three transgender minors joined two adults, who had previously received NYU Langone’s youth gender-affirming care, to sue the medical center and the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday — eight days before the subpoena’s original June 10 deadline. The plaintiffs claimed the subpoena jeopardizes their protected medical information, violating their civil rights. 

Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda Legal are representing the patients in the class-action suit. They asked the judge to issue a temporary restraining order, blocking NYU Langone from complying with the subpoena, while the lawsuit is ongoing. On June 22, the groups will appear in court with NYU Langone and the Justice Department’s legal teams.  

“These subpoenas are a baseless intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship, demanding medical professionals substitute their expertise for the Trump administration’s politics,” ACLU attorney Elizabeth Gill said in a press release. “By weaponizing federal investigations, the administration is trying to scare hospitals into dropping patients and abandoning families.”

In the May 7 subpoena, the Justice Department demanded NYU Langone disclose information about its transgender youth patients since 2020, as well as its employees who played a role in providing the treatment. Five days later, the medical center told patients it takes their privacy “very seriously” and was still deciding how to respond to the demand. Though the lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York, the subpoena originated from the Northern District of Texas, where a judge recently ruled to enforce a similar demand made to Rhode Island Hospital last year.

In statements to the court, parents of the transgender patients suing NYU Langone said they feared what the government would do with their children’s medical records. They added that they had trusted NYU Langone to ensure that their personal information — including biographical details, test results and medical histories — would be kept confidential.

NYU Langone suspended its gender-affirming care program for minors in February, abruptly cutting off hormone therapy and puberty blockers from transgender children receiving care at the medical center. It cited “the current regulatory environment” to explain the shift, which came after the Trump administration threatened to cut funding to hospitals that treated transgender youth.

Beyond NYU Langone, hospitals across the United States have recently received subpoenas from the Justice Department — several of which have already complied. In Tuesday’s suit, the plaintiffs claimed the subpoenas seen nationwide are part of a “systematic campaign to exclude transgender people from public life.” Last year, the federal government issued subpoenas to more than 20 hospitals and doctors nationwide offering gender-affirming care to minors, claiming to investigate “healthcare fraud, false statements and more.”

Last week, six families with transgender children sued a children’s hospital affiliated with Stanford University to stop it from complying with a subpoena nearly identical to the one sent to NYU Langone. In Maryland, a group of families asked a federal judge to block the Justice Department’s nationwide demands for medical records last month. 

An NYU Langone spokesperson declined WSN’s request for comment. The Justice Department did not respond to WSN’s request for comment.

Contact Zachary Karp at [email protected].