A federal judge in California has blocked the U.S. Department of Justice from using a grand jury subpoena to obtain private medical records from transgender patients who received gender-affirming care as minors at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford.
The preliminary injunction, issued July 2 by U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts in San Jose, bars the Justice Department from obtaining records that could identify patients as having sought transition-related care or reveal diagnoses, clinical assessments, treatment, or consent records. The ruling came in a class-action case brought by families and patients after the hospital received a subpoena tied to a federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas.
For families whose children received care in California, the ruling is a direct barrier against one of the Trump administration’s most aggressive legal tactics in its campaign against transgender health care: using criminal investigative tools to seek confidential medical information from hospitals outside Texas.
Pitts found that the families and patients were likely to succeed on their claim that the subpoena would violate constitutional privacy rights under the Fifth Amendment. The judge also found that the records at issue involved “highly sensitive” information and that the patients’ privacy interests outweighed any legitimate government need for the material.
The order does not block the Justice Department from seeking records from every hospital in California. Pitts limited the injunction to records held by Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, finding the record before him did not show that patients at other California providers faced the same immediate risk. But within that limit, the decision sharply rejected the government’s demand for identifying medical information from transgender youth and their families.
The subpoena came from a Texas grand jury even though the hospital, the patients, and the records are in California. Legal groups representing the families said the government had already seen administrative subpoenas for similar records quashed by courts across the country before turning to grand jury subpoenas.
Reuters reported that the Stanford-linked ruling marked the third time a judge intervened to stop the Justice Department from obtaining gender-affirming care records through grand jury subpoenas. A federal judge last month blocked subpoenas seeking records from New York City providers, including NYU Langone Health. Another federal judge blocked the department from receiving records from Rhode Island Hospital, which is operated by Brown University Health, while appeals continue.
The California case, Z.A. v. Blanche, grew out of the administration’s broader push to end federal support for gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Shortly after returning to office in January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending federal funding or support for such care and directing the Justice Department to prioritize investigations involving it.
Pitts wrote that the subpoena was issued as part of the Justice Department’s “mission to ‘end’ gender-affirming care for minors experiencing symptoms of gender dysphoria.” The court also pointed to the department’s earlier use of more than 20 administrative subpoenas aimed at providers of gender-affirming care, which sought evidence of alleged fraud and violations of federal health care laws.
For transgender youth and their families, the legal fight centers not only on access to care, but on whether the federal government can obtain identifying medical records from people who are not accused of wrongdoing. Medical records involving gender dysphoria, treatment decisions, parental consent, and clinical assessments carry obvious privacy risks, especially in a political climate where transgender people and their providers have faced escalating scrutiny.
The ruling also protects families’ ability to remain anonymous in court. Pitts allowed the plaintiffs to proceed under pseudonyms, recognizing the risk of harassment if their identities were exposed. That protection is especially important because the records sought by the government could identify patients who received care as children.
Advocates for the families described the decision as a major privacy victory. Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, said the court recognized that parents and children have a constitutionally protected privacy interest in their medical records. Jennifer Levi, GLAD Law’s senior director of transgender and queer rights, said the government could not use children’s medical files to serve a political agenda.
The Justice Department declined to comment to Reuters. The hospital did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
The case is part of a fast-moving series of legal battles over federal demands for transgender patients’ records. In New York, the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and Lambda Legal filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of families and young adults whose identities and sensitive health information were sought through subpoenas issued as part of a Texas-based federal investigation. That lawsuit argues the demands violate privacy rights and protections against unreasonable searches.
The New York subpoena to NYU Langone sought identifying and sensitive health information for patients who received treatment for gender dysphoria while under 18 from January 2020 through May 2026. Other New York City institutions, including Mount Sinai Health System, may have received similar subpoenas, according to the ACLU.
The repeated court interventions suggest judges are increasingly skeptical of the Justice Department’s attempt to use federal investigative power to obtain confidential records from hospitals that provided lawful care in their own states. But the litigation remains active, and the California injunction does not end the federal investigation or prevent the administration from trying similar tactics elsewhere.
For now, families in the Stanford-linked case have won a ruling that keeps their children’s medical records out of federal hands while the case proceeds. As Minter put it, “Today’s preliminary injunction ruling is a strong indication our case will succeed on the merits.”
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