Read more at The Advocate.

A federal judge has quashed the Department of Justice’s subpoena for the records of QueerDoc, a telehealth service that prescribes medications and offers consulting for gender-affirming care in 10 states.

The DOJ subpoenaed QueerDoc June 11, requesting personnel information, documents identifying patients, patients’ medical records, billing records, insurance claims, communications with drugmakers, and more. It was among more than 20 such subpoenas issued.

The same day, the DOJ’s Civil Division issued a memo saying it would “prioritize investigations of doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and other appropriate entities” for “possible violations of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and other laws” regarding medications used in gender-affirming care and False Claims Act violations by health care providers who “evade state bans on gender dysphoria treatments by knowingly submitting claims to Medicaid with false diagnosis codes.”

These investigations derived from Donald Trump’s executive order recognizing only male and female sexes as assigned at birth and another denouncing gender-affirming care for minors as “a stain on our Nation’s history” that “must end” and threatening federal funding that provide such care. He also directed the DOJ to investigate providers. In April, Attorney General Pam Bondi released a memo saying the DOJ would “act decisively to protect our children and hold accountable those who mutilate them under the guise of care.” She used the same language about mutilation in a later press release. That a day after QueerDoc filed motions with a U.S. District Court in Washington State to quash the subpoena and seal the court proceedings, according to the court.

“DOJ issued its inflammatory press release declaring that medical professionals have ‘mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology,’ one day after QueerDoc filed these motions, effectively destroying any claim to investigative confidentiality while attempting to sway public sentiment against healthcare providers like QueerDoc,” Judge Jamal Whitehead wrote in his ruling, which came out Monday. “Such conduct appears calculated to intimidate rather than investigate.”

“The question before the Court is whether DOJ may use its administrative subpoena power to achieve what the Administration cannot accomplish through legislation: the elimination of medical care that Washington and other states explicitly protect. The answer is no,” he continued. He noted that gender-affirming care is supported by major medical groups and many courts.

Whitehead added, “When a federal agency issues a subpoena not to investigate legal violations but to intimidate and coerce providers into abandoning lawful medical care, it exceeds its legitimate authority and abuses the judicial process.”

He denied the motion to seal the proceedings “because, despite legitimate safety concerns, transparency in judicial proceedings remains paramount when challenging executive power,” he wrote.

QueerDoc welcomed the ruling. “The court affirmed that government power cannot be used to intimidate providers or breach the confidentiality of patients seeking medically necessary care,” the organization said in a statement on its website. “This is a win not just for QueerDoc, but for every clinician and patient fighting for the right to safe, private healthcare.”

The subpoena was “a calculated attempt by the Trump administration and Attorney General Pam Bondi to weaponize the Department of Justice against transgender people and the clinicians who care for them,” the statement noted. QueerDoc did not surrender any patient information to the DOJ, and care was not disrupted, the group said.

A federal judge in Massachusetts quashed a similar DOJ subpoena to Boston Children’s Hospital in September, and the department is appealing, Politico reports. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are in court fighting DOJ subpoenas on gender-affirming care as well.

Asked by Politico for comment on the QueerDoc ruling, the DOJ issued this statement: “As Attorney General Bondi has made clear, this Department of Justice will use every legal and law enforcement tool available to protect innocent children from being mutilated under the guise of ‘care.’”

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seeks to end all Medicaid and Medicare funding for young people’s gender-affirming care (GAC), according to newly proposed rules shared by NPR. A trans activist said the rules would amount to a “de facto national ban” on GAC.

The proposed rules would prohibit all federal Medicaid and Medicare funding — as well as funding through the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) — for any services at hospitals that provide GAC for trans youth.

“These would be proposals that would go out for public comment, it would take months for the Trump administration to issue a final rule, and then, if past is prologue, we would see litigation over whatever the final rules are,” Katie Keith, director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at Georgetown University, told NPR.

Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, a right-wing think tank that has pushed national transphobia as an effective Republican political strategy, said of the proposed rules, “I think these restrictions are very good. It’s going to change the entire transgender industry, and it’s going to take away a lot of their funding streams.”

“This would be a de facto national ban,” wrote trans activist and civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo via Bluesky. “There would still be providers in blue states that don’t take federal funding but the large interdisciplinary teams of just a few years ago would be nearly impossible to maintain. The result is that the care that remains would largely be underground with worse support and likely outcomes.”

“They’ll never be able to fully ban this care,” Caraballo added. “There will always be providers willing to provide it like abortion. Even without access to providers, many trans youth will simply go DIY [do-it-yourself] like trans folks have done for decades. They’re not actually banning this care, they’re making it less safe.”

The administration’s “toxic” war on gender-affirming care

Though there is no federal law banning gender-affirming care, the current presidential administration has sought to eradicate the practice through a January executive order (that has since been blocked by several courts). The order instructed the DOJ to extend the time that patients and parents can sue gender-affirming doctors and to use laws against false advertising to prosecute any entity that may be misleading the public about the long-term effects of gender-affirming care (GAC).

In April, Bondi issued a memo to DOJ employees, telling them to investigate and prosecute cases of minors accessing gender-affirming care as female genital mutilation (FGM), even though hospitals don’t conduct such female genital surgeries. The memo threatened to jail doctors for 10 years if they provide gender-affirming care to young trans people.

The following June, the DOJ sent subpoenas to 20 medical providers who offer GAC to trans youth, demanding patients’ Social Security numbers, emails, home addresses, and information on the care they received, as well as other sensitive information dating back to January 2020. A federal judge blocked the subpoena in one instance and accused the DOJ of going on a “bad faith” “fishing expedition” to interfere with states’ rights to protect GAC within its borders, to harass and intimidate providers from offering such care, and to dissuade patients from seeking such care.

Fewer than 3,000 teens nationwide receive puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy, according to a 2025 JAMA analysis of private insurance data. Gender-affirming care is supported by all major medical associations in the U.S., including the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, as safe and life-saving for young people with gender dysphoria.

One doctor interviewed by The Washington Post called the federal government’s crusade against gender-affirming care a “toxic plan” that will force some patients to detransition, potentially forcing them into adverse psychological and physical effects, including increased anxiety, depression, and the development of unwanted physical changes.