Three families, together with two transgender young adults, filed a lawsuit this week in New York to block a Justice Department subpoena demanding that NYU Langone hand over the medical records of every minor who received gender-affirming care there since 2020. Every single one. Names, records, personal information: all of it, to the federal government, via a grand jury in Texas.
Think about what that means for a moment. A teenager who was treated by their doctor, with their parents' support, for a recognised medical condition, now has the federal government trying to get hold of their private health records. Not because anyone alleges that child did anything wrong. Because the government wants to build a case that the care they received was fraudulent.
It was not fraudulent. Gender-affirming care for young people is supported by the World Health Organisation, the Endocrine Society, WPATH, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which reaffirmed that support as recently as 2025, under direct political pressure. The suggestion that it is fraudulent is not a legal finding. It is a political position dressed up in legal language.
The DOJ has anchored this investigation in the Northern District of Texas, in the court of a judge described by Reuters as "a venue favoured by conservatives." That is not a neutral legal choice. It is forum shopping: placing cases in front of judges most likely to rule the way you want. The same judge has reportedly issued injunctions barring hospitals in other states from seeking relief in their own federal courts. A judge in Texas telling a hospital in Rhode Island what courts it is allowed to approach. The children whose records are at stake have been told, in effect, that they cannot ask their own legal system for help.
One teenager caught up in the Rhode Island Hospital case, named only by their first initial because their family has faced harassment and threats, told WBUR: "Every week there's something new. One week, they try to ban care. Another week, you find out that they want to know your personal information." That is a child describing their life under a government that is supposed to protect them. That sentence should stop us in our tracks.
The DOJ has framed part of its investigation around the off-label use of medications. But as the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality makes clear, off-label prescribing is both legal and common across all of medicine. Trazodone, originally developed for depression, is routinely prescribed for insomnia. Aspirin is given to prevent heart attacks. Countless medicines are used beyond their original licensed indication because doctors, over time, find that they help. Singling out gender-affirming care for scrutiny on this basis, while leaving every other area of medicine untouched, is not principled medicine regulation. It is targeted suppression.
What is happening here has a straightforward logic. Make care legally risky for providers, and providers stop providing it. Trans healthcare centres across the United States are closing. Families who were already navigating long waits and limited access are now navigating an environment of active fear. The chilling effect is the point.
Noor Noman, the writer who reported this story and who is a trans man in his forties, puts it simply: the energy required to navigate this landscape is enormous, and he is an adult. He cannot imagine, he writes, what it is doing to children who want nothing more than to simply be kids. I can only agree. I have spent years talking with trans young people and their families, and what they want is ordinary. They want to go to school, see their friends, feel comfortable in their own skin, and grow up. They are not asking for anything extraordinary. They are asking to exist.
The families filing these lawsuits are not radicals. They are parents who took their children to doctors, received medical advice, followed it, and are now being told that the care their children received may be used against them. They are fighting back not because they relish a legal battle, but because they have no other choice. That is where we are: Pride Month 2025, and trans families across the United States are in court, not celebrating, defending their children's right to medical care from the federal government.
The constitutional arguments at the heart of these cases are not abstract. They concern the right of families to make medical decisions for their children without state interference, the right to medical privacy, and the right not to have the government use the legal system as a weapon against you for receiving lawful care. Those are not ideological positions. They are the foundations of a functioning democracy, and they are being tested right now by families who simply wanted their children to be well.
I hope the courts hold. And I hope these families know that people around the world are watching what they are doing, and are grateful for their courage.
If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.
Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the lives at the centre of both.