The Department of Justice has suffered another setback in their quest to invade the privacy of transgender children receiving necessary healthcare and their families.
One of the latest unlawful probes into the medical records of trans kids, part of a relentless crusade by the Department of Justice that began nearly a year ago to the day, has been headed off by a federal judge. Judge P. Casey Pitts, ruling on the case Z.A. v. Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford in the Northern District of California, described the probe as part of a “bad-faith campaign to intimidate hospitals into halting the lawful provision of gender-affirming care,” and approved the plaintiffs’ request for injunctive relief that prevents the Department of Justice and Acting United States Attorney General Todd Blanche from “requesting, receiving, or otherwise obtaining the sensitive health information demanded by the grand jury subpoena issued to [Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford].”
Yippee!
Plaintiffs in Z.A. v. Packard originally requested a temporary restraining order to the same effect, but agreed to have the request for a TRO converted to a preliminary injunction. While TROs and preliminary injunctions are similar legal orders that have similar prerequisites, a TRO is typically issued before a formal hearing (and then lasts until that hearing can take place), while a preliminary injunction is issued before a case has been properly argued in court, and typically remains in place until that case has concluded.
Preliminary injunctions can also be appealed, if the party whom they are levied against believes the injunction has been approved in error. So, you know, watch out for that. And because plaintiffs’ request for a statewide class action suit was rejected, the injunctive relief applies only to the six northern California families named in the suit. But, as Judge Pitts points out, Packard is far from the only hospital being bullied by the Department of Justice with regards to trans kids’ healthcare.
“Packard is not the only hospital outside Texas that DOJ has targeted from that state,” writes Judge Pitts. “In April, DOJ sought (and received) an order from the Northern District of Texas compelling Rhode Island Hospital to disclose the patient records of transgender minors in response to an administrative subpoena. And on the same day DOJ issued the grand jury subpoena at issue in this case, it issued a nearly identical subpoena to NYU Langone Hospitals in New York. Nothing on the face of the grand jury subpoena served on Packard suggests any nexus to Texas—for example, the requested records are not limited to care provided to patients from Texas. But as the Texas judge presiding over certain matters relating to DOJ’s subpoenas has explained, DOJ is “a frequent forum shopper.”
In case you aren’t aware, the Department of Justice has been issuing these grand jury subpoenas on hospitals through Judge Reed O’Connor, a Federalist Society judge in the Northern District of Texas. The Federalist Society is a pervasive, cancerous conservative advocacy organization that has infiltrated much of the American judiciary in an attempt to enforce archaic, regressive beliefs on the entire nation.
Now, what authority does a Texas judge (albeit federal) have over hospitals in California, Rhode Island and New York, three states that do not fall under the judicial purview of his district? Great question! I wish I could give you an answer. Katelyn Burns made a fantastically informative video on O’Connor, in which she (quoting Peter Shamshiri from If Books Could Kill) describes him as “a point of leverage in the system for the right.”
O’Connor holds a lifetime appointment position (thanks, Dubya) and is frequently utilized by conservatives to issue sweeping rulings on cases that he has absolutely no business being involved in, and there is simply no way to stop him from occupying this “point of leverage” role. This, from the administration that convinced the Supreme Court to take a stance against nationwide injunctions. I guess those are only bad if they go against Donald Trump’s vision for America.
Judge Pitts puts it plainly in his ruling: “[Courts] have found that DOJ is engaged “in an obvious effort to shield its recent investigative tactics—previously rejected by every other court to review them—from [those courts’] review, in favor of a distant forum that DOJ deems friendly to its political positions.”
Because Judge Pitts believes plaintiffs are likely to successfully argue that the Department of Justice is violating their Fourth Amendment rights to informational privacy, they have received temporary relief from the invasive overreach of the department and Blanche. Unfortunately, Packard is just one of many hospitals Trump’s Department of Justice is trying to intimidate into dropping treatment for trans kids, and many of those hospitals are trying very hard to comply, leaving kids without the help they desperately need.
