A federal judge has blocked the Department of Justice from obtaining the identities and medical records of transgender minors treated at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, ruling that the demand formed part of a bad-faith campaign to intimidate hospitals into halting lawful gender-affirming care. The preliminary injunction protects tens of thousands of patient records, and at least eight similar subpoenas have been quashed across six other states.

What actually happened in court

U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts issued a 43-page preliminary injunction prohibiting the DOJ and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche from requesting, receiving, or otherwise obtaining sensitive health information about patients who received gender-affirming care at Stanford while under 18, covering the period from January 2020 to the day before the grand jury subpoena was issued in May this year. The records at stake numbered in the "tens of thousands," according to the hospital's own counsel.

Judge Pitts was not diplomatic about what he saw. He wrote that the DOJ's demand would disclose "children's private health information to officials who expressly intend to deprive them of medical care that their families, doctors, and the California legislature deem necessary and appropriate." He called that an "obvious harm." He also found that the patient records had "no discernible relevance" to any federal healthcare offence the Texas grand jury could legitimately be investigating, and that the patients were likely to succeed on a Fifth Amendment right to informational privacy.

The grand jury angle matters, and Judge Pitts named it directly. The DOJ originally sought these records through an administrative subpoena, one of more than 20 issued to gender-affirming care providers nationwide. Stanford spent nine months negotiating, produced certain non-patient records, but never disclosed identifying patient data. Then, in May this year, the DOJ withdrew the administrative subpoena and replaced it with a grand jury subpoena of nearly identical scope, issued under the seal of a Texas court and demanding compliance within weeks. At least one other federal court, in Rhode Island, had already called this out as "an obvious effort" to find a distant forum more politically aligned with the administration's goals. Judge Pitts quoted that observation approvingly.

Six families took Stanford to court to protect their children

This injunction did not arrive by accident. Six families of underage patients, represented by the National Center for LGBTQ Rights and GLAD Law, filed a lawsuit to prevent Stanford from complying with the subpoena. Among the records demanded was anything "sufficient to identify every patient" who received what the government chose to call "sex-rejecting procedures," a phrase chosen for its politics rather than its medicine. Those families went to court knowing their children's names and diagnoses were at stake. That is not a small thing to do, and I think they deserve to have that courage recognised plainly.

Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, said after Thursday's ruling that families in California can now sleep at night knowing that the attempt to harass and intimidate them, and to dictate how they raise their own children, has been stopped. Jennifer Levi of GLAD Law had already described the use of a secret grand jury process as "extraordinary measures." Both of them are right.

A pattern the courts have now seen clearly

What strikes me most about Judge Pitts' ruling is that it is not a lone voice. He cited at least eight federal court decisions across six states that had already quashed similar administrative subpoenas issued to other hospitals. On June 24 alone, a judge in New York granted similar relief to patients of NYU Langone Hospitals, which received a nearly identical subpoena on the same day as Stanford. The DOJ's response to each rebuff has been to try a different route, a different forum, a different legal mechanism. The target stays the same: the private medical records of children.

This pattern is not incidental. It flows directly from a January 2025 executive order in which Donald Trump directed federal agencies to end gender-transition-related care for minors, and from a subsequent memorandum issued by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi ordering investigations of providers. When a judge blocks one mechanism, the administration tries another. When courts in one jurisdiction say no, the subpoena reappears under a Texas seal. The goal, as Judge Pitts has now confirmed in writing, is intimidation: to make hospitals pause, hesitate, and ultimately stop offering care that is lawful, that families have requested, and that doctors have provided in good conscience.

The fact that courts keep saying no is genuinely significant. These are not ideologically predictable rulings: they are judges reading the law and finding that what the DOJ is doing does not hold up. Judge Pitts found bad faith. Other courts have reached the same conclusion by different routes. The judiciary is doing what it is supposed to do, and that matters, even when every win has to be fought for individually and even when the administration keeps looking for ways around each decision.

What is at stake when the state reaches for a child's medical file

A child's medical record is among the most private things that exists. It contains diagnoses, conversations with doctors, consent decisions made by families at a moment of real vulnerability, and clinical details that belong to nobody except the child and their care team. The DOJ did not ask for aggregate data or anonymised statistics. It asked for documents sufficient to identify every patient by name. That is a list of children.

Many of those children and their families will have weighed these decisions carefully, over months or years, with qualified clinicians, with the full support of those around them, and in a state where the care is legal. The idea that the federal government should be able to obtain their names and diagnoses, over a hospital's objections and a judge's clear misgivings, in order to pursue an investigation with no discernible legal basis, is one that Judge Pitts has now called out for exactly what it is.

Stanford's Lucile Packard hospital said it remains committed to protecting patient privacy, complying with court orders, and delivering the highest quality care. That is the right position, and I hope every institution facing similar pressure holds it.

The injunction will remain in effect while the case continues. The DOJ can appeal to the Ninth Circuit. This is not over. But for the families who went to court to protect their children, and for the tens of thousands of patients whose records now stay private, this ruling is something real and something worth saying out loud: good.

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Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender identity, trans healthcare, and the lives of trans people and their families.