A federal judge has blocked a move by the Trump administration to access patient records of a healthcare provider specializing in treating transgender patients. The decision accuses the Justice Department of using its investigation as a form of intimidation, and is the Washington state judge’s latest decision against policies championed by Trump.

Judge Jamal Whitehead blocks DOJ’s attempt to intimidate healthcare providers

Judge Jamal Whitehead blocked the Department of Justice’s efforts to enforce a wide-ranging subpoena for records from QueerDoc, an online provider of gender-affirming care. In his ruling, Whitehead accused the government of seeking to intimidate service providers to eliminate care for gender dysphoria.

“This is not speculation about hidden motives — it is the Administration’s explicit agenda,” Whitehead stated. Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has indicated his intention to ban gender-affirming care and issued various executive orders restricting the acknowledgement of transgender identity, such as limiting gender declaration by the federal government to cisgender male or female.

In July, the Justice Department issued subpoenas to multiple “doctors and clinics involved in performing transgender medical procedures on children.” Attorney General Pam Bondi said at the time, “Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice.” Whitehead ruled, “The Government seeks the ‘intended effect’ of its Executive Orders and these subpoenas to ‘downsize or eliminate’ all gender-affirming care. No clearer evidence of improper purpose could exist than the Government’s own repeated declarations that it seeks to end the very practice it claims to be merely investigating.” While Whitehead granted QueerDoc’s request to block the requirement to hand over its records, he denied the organization’s request to keep the case secret.

Blocking the Trump administration’s overreach

The subpoena issued to QueerDoc was part of a larger trend of policies aimed at medical professionals and organizations engaged in treating transgender patients. Earlier this year, a Supreme Court decision allowed states to maintain laws that ban gender treatments for minors. Hospitals and medical service providers who administer such treatment have been subjected to threats and scrutiny. For example, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, headed by Trump-appointed fellow TV personality and physician Mehmet Oz, sent a letter to several leading children’s hospitals demanding data such as the revenue they generate from gender treatments for minors and the rates at which patients express regret over them. Dr. Oz stated that his agency “has an obligation to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars.” The FBI has also called on members of the public to report instances of doctors or hospitals performing gender-related surgery on minors, which experts say is rare. The overall hostility of the Trump administration toward these institutions factored into Whitehead’s ruling that “D.O.J. has abandoned good-faith investigation in favor of policy enforcement through prosecutorial coercion” in the QueerDoc case.

The goal of reversing trans rights and recognition was among the most prominent stances Trump has taken, alongside other issues such as immigration restriction, and Whitehead has differed with the administration in this area as well. Earlier this year, Whitehead blocked the Trump administration from ending the United States’ longstanding refugee resettlement program. In ruling that Trump had attempted to override the will of Congress, which created the refugee program in 1980, Whitehead said, “The president has substantial discretion” over refugee policy, “but that authority is not limitless.” These rulings by Whitehead, a Biden appointee, have led to the judge being labeled as an “activist judge,” who conservatives have singled out as opposing the Trump agenda.

So far, opposition to the rulings of Whitehead and other judges has consisted chiefly of online chatter from disgruntled right-wing social media posters. Meanwhile, Whitehead’s latest ruling is the second time this year that he has put the Trump administration in check for overstepping its authority to promote its agenda.
The post Judge Jamal Whitehead Blocks Trump Admin Subpoena For Trans Healthcare Records appeared first on Blavity.



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