A federal judge in Pittsburgh on Monday denied a request by the U.S. Department of Justice to force UPMC to turn over anonymized records for minor patients who received gender-affirming care and sharply criticized the government for its stance on transgender Americans.
“Its rhetoric regarding gender-affirming care reflects callous indifference, if not abject cruelty,” Chief U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon of the Western District of Pennsylvania wrote of the Justice Department. “There is more than a ‘whiff’ of ill-intent. Arguably, it is closer to a stench.”
In her four-page order, Bissoon said it would be impossible for UPMC to provide “true and effective anonymization.”
The ruling Monday follows another she issued in December, quashing a subpoena the Justice Department filed against UPMC last summer, asking for detailed medical histories, diagnoses and treatment plans for all patients who received gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers or hormone therapy.
In that order, Bissoon gave both sides until Jan. 16 to file briefs on a scaled-back request that would have allowed UPMC to turn over anonymized records only.
Mimi McKenzie, the legal director of the Public Interest Law Center that filed the initial action seeking to quash the UPMC subpoena, praised the judge’s order Monday evening, calling it “a stinging rebuke of the government’s actions.”
“There was simply no way to anonymize these deeply personal records,” McKenzie said.
The strong language from the court, she continued, makes it clear “that this type of government overreach is simply not acceptable.”
A message left with UPMC was not immediately returned.
The Justice Department, which issued similar subpoenas to at least 20 hospital systems across the country, has claimed that it was conducting a nationwide investigation into off-label drug use and fraudulent billing.
In a brief in the UPMC subpoena case, the government argued that it routinely handles sensitive and confidential information in criminal investigations, and that it can be trusted to do so in this case.
Bissoon wasn’t swayed, calling the department’s actions in this area “unprecedented.
“To the extent the DOJ has urged trust, moreover, it must understand why its assurances are cold comfort,” Bissoon wrote. “Reliance on historical norms, standards and frankly, decency, cannot be seen as given.”
Instead, she continued, “Left to its devices, the DOJ would trample states rights to amass deeply personal information ‒ regarding minor children ‒ in service of its crusade to eliminate medical care that, until recently, was in its own eyes legal.”
Bissoon wrote that the subpoena exceeds the Justice Department’s authority, and that the time for “benefit of the doubt, is over.”
In a footnote, Bissoon quoted a press release issued by the Justice Department in which it “touted its ‘core purpose’ of ‘defending the Constitution and protecting the God-given rights of every single American.’”
“Transgender Americans surely would appreciate its commitment to honoring and protecting theirs,” Bissoon wrote. “They have reason to question, however, where in its vision they fit.”
Last month, prior to Bissoon’s final order, the government filed a notice of appeal to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
No court across the country, McKenzie said, has enforced one of the Justice Department subpoenas seeking medical records for transgender youth.
In the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in November, a federal judge there wrote a 75-page opinion denying such a request for records from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“I think district courts around the country are holding the line on the rule of law, and we hope that continues at the appellate level,” McKenzie said.