Subpoena of NYU Langone trans youth health records pierces ‘bubble’ of safety for patients & families

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Ann was at dinner for her adult child’s birthday on Monday when a text alert came through letting her know she had a message in the NYU Langone patient portal. Though her kid was no longer a minor, they still allowed mom to maintain access to their messages from the Transgender Youth Health program to make sure they didn’t miss anything important. Electing to ignore the text, Ann waited til she was back home later that evening to read it. Then she handed her phone to her kid, who was home in New York City on a brief visit from college, so they could read it, too. “I could just watch their face fall,” Ann told me.

When Ann’s kid came out as nonbinary at 14 and expressed a desire to seek gender-affirming care, she was immediately supportive. She spoke to the pediatrician who then referred her to NYU Lagone’s program, and had a call with a doctor and then a social worker to get the process started. “It was surprisingly seamless,” she told The Handbasket. Ann knows she lives in a bubble, and that’s by design to keep her family safe; but that bubble was pierced this week when the hospital sent out a message letting patients who’d received care with the trans youth health program know that a federal court in Texas had issued a criminal subpoena for their private health records. Discouragingly, they didn’t say anything about fighting the subpoena, leaving patients and families terrified and looking to outside officials and organizations for help.

“On May 7, 2026, NYU Langone Hospitals (‘NYULHLH’) was one of several institutions that received a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas,” the message to NYULH patients, which was also posted on their website, reads. “Among other requests, the subpoena directs NYULH to provide information pertaining to patients under the age of 18 who received gender affirming care at NYULH between 2020-2026, as well as the names of NYULH providers and others who were involved in offering such care at NYULH in that timeframe.” The notice said, pursuant to New York’s Shield Law, they were required to notify patients 30 days before complying.

I was first alerted to NYULH’s announcement by Bernadette, whose child received care during the time period specified in the subpoena but is now over 18, and who told me she was “furious” about the notice. “I was in disbelief,” she said. “I was scared for my child's well-being. I was scared for the medical professionals who will support my child's well-being.” When we spoke earlier this week, I asked what she feared most if NYULH were to comply with the subpoena: “That my child's information would become public and it would be a danger to them because there are a lot of intolerant people in the world right now,” she said.

Ann (a pseudonym to protect her family’s privacy) sent an email to NYULH the following morning asking what they planned to do, whether they could quash the subpoena, and how on Earth the Northern District of Texas could have jurisdiction. She received a brief reply that she shared with The Handbasket and that provided her family little comfort. It stated in part, “We understand that news of this subpoena is unsettling to our patients. Please be assured that we take the privacy of your protected health information very seriously. We are evaluating our response to the subpoena with our legal advisors and reviewing all available avenues to protect our patients' information while ensuring that we comply with applicable law.”

As soon as Trump’s second term began last year, he issued an executive order threatening to withhold federal funding from health care providers who provided this type of care. While NYULH didn’t make any immediate changes to its offerings, like access to hormone blockers and hormone therapy, patients and families started noticing a decline in services. The parents of two NYULH patients shared with the New York Times that in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s EO, they had their appointments canceled, with one doctor reportedly citing “the new administration” as the reason.

Bernadette (also a pseudonym) tried to schedule surgery for her child a few weeks prior in early January 2025, and at first someone at NYULH said yes to moving forward with scheduling. But after Trump’s inauguration it was radio silence, leaving Bernadette to call relentlessly with no idea if the surgery could move forward. 

“Then finally, after me hounding them over and over, I finally got someone on the phone who said they're no longer doing the surgery,” she said. 

Bernadette told The Handbasket that her child wanted gender-affirming surgery before heading off to college “so they would have a clean slate.” She explained that surgeons book up months and months in advance, “so them delaying getting back to me by a few months was also delaying our chance of scheduling a surgery and having our child have time to heal before college.”

Fortunately Bernadette was able to get her child an appointment with a private surgeon elsewhere and the surgery was completed before college started. But not before creating unnecessary stress and denying her kid care that just a few months earlier they’d been guaranteed.

NYULH eventually announced in February this year that they’d be ceasing all gender-affirming care for minors. (Now when you visit the page for Gender & Sexuality, the only offerings are mental health-related.) A few days later, an official in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office sent a letter to NYULH demanding they resume their trans youth care, giving them 10 days to comply. But there was never any compliance before the criminal subpoena was issued to NYULH on May 7th. 

“The sudden discontinuation of medically necessary transgender healthcare can have severe, negative health outcomes,” the letter stated “Accordingly, the Attorney General is extremely concerned by your institution’s decision to cease the provision of care to this vulnerable, minority population…New York state laws prohibit discrimination based on a patient’s membership in a protected class, including sex, gender identity, and disability, and remain in full effect.”

But when I reached James’ spokesperson earlier this week, her office took a noticeably more cautious tone: “New York has strong protections in place to protect the privacy of patient records. Every health care institution in New York should seek to protect both patients and providers.”

The same day NYULH announced they’d be ending trans youth care, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration released its preliminary $127 billion budget for fiscal year 2027. While running for office last year, Mamdani pledged to invest $65 million “in public providers to provide gender-affirming care to New Yorkers who seek it and will hold private entities abetting Trump’s attacks to account.” This pledge is not specifically reflected in the proposed budget, though experts told Prism in March that it doesn’t necessarily mean the funding won’t come through in the final budget. On April 30th, a coalition of LGBTQ+ groups gathered at City Hall to put pressure on Mamdani to keep his campaign promise. 

“Community led partners…have always been central to responding to the longstanding disparities and exigent crises facing LGBTQIA+ people," Taylor Brown, head of Mamdani’s new LGBTQIA+ Affairs Office and the first trans person to lead a city agency, said in a statement to Them in response to the rally. "They understand the issues, they have and continue to provide solutions, and the Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs proudly stands with them in this ask to the City Council, to ensure that their work protecting some of the most vulnerable populations in NYC continues."

But in the days since news of the NYULH subpoena broke, Mamdani’s office has remained mum. Multiple requests for comment from The Handbasket to multiple members of his administration went unanswered. 

Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Siegel attended a rally outside City Hall Wednesday morning where protesters urged NYULH not to comply. “I urge every provider to fight these subpoenas,” he said, according to The Advocate. “Every hospital in New York regards patient privacy as sacrosanct. Otherwise, no patient could feel comfortable walking through their doors.”

Though NYULH isn’t the first hospital to be subpoenaed, it’s the first to get a criminal subpoena—meaning potential criminal charges for practitioners involved. Last year, Boston Children’s Hospital received a civil subpoena to provide the Department of Justice with information about minor patients who received gender-affirming care; in September, a judge blocked it. Rhode Island Hospital received a similar subpoena last July “seeking over half a decade of sensitive medical information of every minor patient that had received gender affirming care at that hospital”; that, too, was blocked by a judge this week. 

In her opinion, Trump appointee Mary McElroy excoriated the DOJ’s attempts to access Rhode Islanders’ private health care information, addressed DOJ’s decision to do so from a more favorable venue in Texas—the same one that issued the NYULH subpoena—and called the quashing of the subpoena warranted for reasons of “bad” faith and 14th amendment privacy violations.

“Ultimately, the Court’s decision is based solely on its application of the law to the administrative subpoena at issue here,” McElroy wrote. “But the discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ’s tactics in this case is unsettling. The Court cannot help but share the sentiment that ‘[t]he presumption of regularity that has previously been extended to [DOJ] that it could be taken at its word—with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes—no longer holds,’” she wrote, quoting United States v. Oregon.

How NYULH will respond to its subpoena remains to be seen. When reached for comment, General Counsel Annette Johnson directed me to their website.

Bernadette has been in touch with PFLAG NYC (Parents, Families & Friends of LGBTQ+ People) as well as David Siffert, a nonbinary candidate running for state assembly, about efforts to protect kids from the subpoena. She was also told Chase Strangio of the ACLU was handling the organization’s effort to push back against it. For the moment though, the families are forced to wait with anxiety as the 30-day window to potential compliance ticks by.

The news of this subpoena comes amidst a major exodus of trans people across the country fleeing oppressive policies in conservative states that are fundamentally hostile to their human rights. A study released in January by The Movement Advancement Project (MAP) with NORC at the University of Chicago found that an estimated 400,000 trans people in America relocated between November 2024 and June 2025 because of these policies. As I wrote about back in February, one such example is the Kansas law that invalidated the drivers license of anyone who had ever changed their gender marker with the DMV. That law is just one of too many.

Much like Ann, Bernadette also said she felt like she and her family lived in a protective bubble—until now. “There is this feeling that if this bubble bursts, there's nowhere else to go. We would have to leave the country.”

Ann feels her child is mostly safe, partly because they’re no longer a minor. “But what about the other kids?” she asked. “What about the other families? What about the people who can't find a way to make their child safe?”