DOJ Targets NYU With Criminal Subpoena for Trans Health Records

New York University’s hospital system said it’s one of multiple institutions that received a grand jury subpoena for transgender health records, the latest escalation of the Justice Department’s investigations of gender-affirming care to minors.

NYU Langone Hospitals and “several institutions” received the subpoena on May 7 requesting “information pertaining to patients under the age of 18 who received gender affirming care” between 2020 and 2026, the hospital system said in a public notice posted on its website Monday. The action is the first apparent criminal grand jury subpoena for trans youth health records by the Justice Department under the second Trump administration, which has so far brought administrative subpoenas that courts have rejected.

The grand jury subpoena came from the US attorney’s office in the Northern District of Texas, which earlier this month secured a court order from a federal judge demanding Rhode Island Hospital comply with a request for youth transgender health records. The Child Advocate for the State of Rhode Island has since filed an emergency motion to quash that subpoena, which it described as an “unprecedented intrusion into the private medical information of children.”

The latest DOJ effort in the Northern District of Texas reflects a shift in the administration’s pursuit of information on gender-affirming care to individuals under 18, going to a reliably conservative judicial district to advance these requests. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, federal judges in at least four districts have ruled against DOJ’s record collection attempts, which one judge described as an effort to “intimidate and harass.”

The grand jury subpoena to NYU Langone requests the names of providers involved in gender-affirming care to minors from 2020 to 2026, the hospital system said. The institution said it issued the notice to patients and providers in line with New York’s shield law for reproductive and gender-affirming care providers. The law says any entity that receives a request for information about legally protected healthcare activity must notify individuals affected “at least 30 days before complying with or providing information in response to the request.”

“Please know that NYU Langone takes the privacy of your protected health information very seriously and we are evaluating our response to the subpoena,” the hospital system said.

It’s unclear which other health entities received grand jury subpoenas. The US attorney’s office for the Northern District of Texas didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

DOJ has for months attempted to secure similar health records, announcing in July 2025 that it had sent out more than 20 administrative subpoenas to clinics and doctors providing transgender care to children, including NYU Langone, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Boston Children’s Hospital.

Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said at the time that DOJ sought to hold accountable medical professionals who provide health services to minors “in the service of a warped ideology.”

A group of transgender minors filed a motion May 9 in the US District Court for the District of Maryland seeking class certification to quash the wave of administrative subpoenas from the Trump administration. The group also requested a preliminary injunction enjoining DOJ from seeking compliance with or enforcing the subpoena requests, arguing that recent enforcement efforts on Rhode Island Hospital “underscore the need for class-wide resolution.”