In an unexpected twist, President Donald Trump’s administration moved to abandon its legal fight to obtain private medical records of youth who received gender-affirming care at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Late Wednesday, a U.S. Department of Justice lawyer filed a two-sentence motion to “voluntarily dismiss” its appeal of a district court ruling that had blocked its subpoena issued to CHOP for patient records.
CHOP lawyers and parents of transgender youth had been gearing up for a legal fight before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. So the development sparked concern by CHOP that the Trump administration was perhaps strategizing to move the subpoena fight from the Third Circuit in Philadelphia to a federal court in Texas.
Last week, a U.S. District Court judge in Texas ordered a Rhode Island hospital to comply with a similar subpoena. The judge issued the ruling within hours of the DOJ filing a petition to enforce it, prompting some transgender advocates to accuse the DOJ of “judge shopping.”
In response to the DOJ’s motion before the Third Circuit, CHOP filed its own motion late Wednesday asking the appellate court to “confirm that it retains jurisdiction” over the Philadelphia-based case to prevent “forum shopping.” CHOP’s five-page motion expressed skepticism of the DOJ’s motives:
“Just this morning, DOJ attorneys reached out to counsel for CHOP indicating that DOJ intended to dismiss its appeal, which has been proceeding in the Third Circuit since January and in which DOJ’s brief was due today,” CHOP lawyers wrote. “That development, along with the DOJ’s unexplained effort to compel compliance by a Rhode Island hospital in the Northern District of Texas, suggest that DOJ may seek to end-run this Court’s jurisdiction.”
The DOJ lawyer who filed the motion declined to comment when reached by a reporter Wednesday evening, referring questions to its press office. CHOP declined to comment.
CHOP case among several nationwide
The DOJ has argued that it needs the medical records of children and teens who have been prescribed puberty blockers and hormone therapies as part of an investigation into possible violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act by drug manufacturers.
The CHOP case is part of a broader legal battle playing out in federal courts nationwide that began last June after the DOJ sent subpoenas to CHOP and 19 other clinics and hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
The sweeping and nearly identical subpoenas gave CHOP and other hospitals about a month to hand over names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, addresses and parent/guardian information of patients.
The subpoena also sought patient psychological records and documents related to how doctors make decisions in prescribing puberty blockers and hormones. Those medications are used to treat gender dysphoria, a medical condition in which a person’s body does not match their gender identity.
CHOP, which runs one of the nation’s largest clinics providing gender-affirming care to children and teens, immediately fought the subpoena.
In July, CHOP asked a federal judge to limit the subpoena’s scope, claiming it “risks imposing significant trauma on patients and their families who did nothing more than seek out lawful medical care.”
Gender-affirming care for minors is legal in Pennsylvania, and medical care is regulated by states, not the federal government. More than two dozen states have passed laws banning gender-affirming care for minors.
Federal judges side with hospitals
Trump opposes such care. After winning the election in November 2024, the then-president elect pledged to take steps to “stop the transgender lunacy.” During his first month in office, Trump signed an executive order, ” Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” barring any federal funding for the transition “of a child from one sex to another.” His administration has since escalated efforts to curtail gender-affirming care and investigate institutions that provide it using subpoenas.
After issuing the subpoenas, then-U. S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said, “Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable.”
So far, federal judges in at least seven cases, including CHOP’s, have ruled against the Trump administration, either blocking or drastically narrowing the subpoenas. Judges sitting in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Seattle have concluded that the subpoenas were overly broad, violated patients’ privacy rights, and in “bad faith” — aimed at restricting legal care rather than investigating legitimate healthcare violations.
In siding with CHOP in a November 2025 opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Mark A. Kearney wrote he agreed that disclosing medical records “would strip patients of control over their most personal information, expose intimate details about their bodies and lives, and risk public outing and lasting stigma.”
“We must also be realistic when recognizing disclosure of certain medical conditions — particularly those burdened by political controversy or public misunderstanding — can inflict extraordinary harm on the patient and their family,” Kearney wrote.
Of the seven subpoena cases, the U.S. Department of Justice has filed appeals in five. Only one, involving the Washington-based telehealth clinic QueerDoc, has been argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Seattle. A decision is pending. Legal observers are closely following the case because it could potentially set precedent, testing the limits of the government’s power to subpoena medical records.
A win for DOJ in Texas
Meanwhile, last week, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, granted a DOJ petition to enforce its subpoena to Rhode Island Hospital. On Monday, child advocates in Rhode Island filed an emergency motion to quash the DOJ subpoena.
O’Connor, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, a Republican, is “a staunch conservative” and the only judge in Fort Worth’s federal court, making it “a favored destination for conservative groups and the Trump administration,” according to Reuters.
In its petition, the DOJ said its investigations into medical providers and drugmakers and distributors nationwide are “being carried out in the Northern District of Texas.” Federal civil procedure rules, however, require subpoena enforcement actions to be brought in “the district where compliance is required.”
“Rather than file its petition to compel production in the District of Rhode Island, where the hospital is located, or in Washington, D.C., where the attorneys leading the investigation are based, DOJ filed in the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division,” CHOP wrote in its appellate court motion. “The Court granted DOJ’s petition in a matter of hours, without waiting for a response from the hospital.”