15 AGs: DOJ Flouts Privacy by Seeking Transgender Youth Health Records
DOJ requests for transgender youth medical records “are an assault on privacy,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) said Thursday. Bonta joined Democratic attorneys general from 13 other states and the District of Columbia in an amicus brief at the U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in a case about DOJ seeking such records in June from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).
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The AGs support CHOP’s motion to limit the federal government’s subpoena “because it demands highly confidential patient information without justification,” the brief said (case 2:25-mc-00039). Also, “it threatens to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship; it seeks to intimidate medical providers from offering critical, medically necessary health care; and it rests on a flawed legal justification that would intrude on the States’ authority to regulate the practice of medicine within their borders.”
“Pennsylvania’s constitutional privacy protections … reflect a centuries-old common understanding that privacy rights are inherent and underscore why the balance tips sharply in favor of limiting the subpoena here,” the Democratic AGs added. “DOJ’s subpoena, if enforced, would harm the innate privacy rights CHOP patients and their families have in their medical records and personal health information -- and ultimately, the privacy rights of all residents in Amici states.”