Rhode Island’s Child Advocate filed an emergency motion this morning in the federal appeals court in Boston seeking a court order before 10 PM EST tonight barring Rhode Island Hospital (RIH) from turning over to a federal court in Texas the sensitive private medical records of minor patients who have received treatment for gender dysphoria at the hospital.
The motion, filed by attorneys for the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island, Democracy Forward, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, was in response to an extraordinary action taken yesterday by a federal judge in Texas, who ordered RIH to turn over the records despite a Rhode Island federal judge’s court order last week quashing the subpoena and barring the federal government from obtaining the extremely sensitive documents. Even more extraordinary, the Texas order from yesterday further required RIH to turn over the records by 11:59 PM CT and barred the hospital from seeking relief in any other court, including Rhode Island.
The emergency motion filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals this morning argues that:
Absent an injunction from this Court, the sensitive medical records the district court protected from disclosure in its order below will leave RIH’s custody tonight. The records at issue include the most intimate details of vulnerable children’s lives, including their identities, diagnoses, gender identity, mental-health history, family circumstances, foster-care information, parent or guardian information, clinical assessments, consent records, and treatment histories. . . . If the records are produced, the practical relief the Child Advocate seeks—preventing the disclosure of children’s medical records to preserve their constitutional privacy rights—will be frustrated.
In quashing the U.S. Department of Justice subpoena for the records last Wednesday, RI federal district judge Mary McElroy ruled that the subpoena “was issued for an improper purpose, and demands the production of records that cannot be obtained consistent with the constitutional privacy rights of Rhode Island children.” Seven other courts across the country have quashed identical subpoenas issued to other providers of medical care for gender dysphoria. The DOJ had sought and obtained judicial approval for the subpoena from the judge in Texas without RI Hospital’s advance knowledge or ability to respond. It was at that point that the Child Advocate intervened to protect the privacy rights of the children affected by the subpoena’s broad reach.
In the motion that the Child Advocate first filed in the case earlier this month, she called the subpoena an “unprecedented intrusion into the private medical information of children, many of whom are among the most vulnerable in our state’s care,” and that “DOJ issued the Subpoena as part of a coordinated campaign by the Trump Administration to eliminate access to medical care for gender dysphoria – lifesaving care that is recognized as medically necessary by every major medical association – even where it is expressly protected by state law, as it is in Rhode Island.”
A copy of the motion and other information about the case can be found here.