Justice Department ends effort to seek University of Pittsburgh Medical Center patient records for minors

Megan Guza, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Aug 11, 2026

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PITTSBURGH — The U.S. Department of Justice has voluntarily ended its pursuit of UPMC Children’s Hospital patient records for juveniles who have received gender-affirming care, according to court records.

The DOJ on Monday filed a motion in the 3rd Circuit Court to voluntarily dismiss its appeal.

The department had for more than a year been seeking to force Pittsburgh-based UPMC and others turn over a broad swath of patient-identifying information for minors who’d been prescribed hormones or puberty blockers since 2020.

“The children we represented, their families, and all minor patients from UPMC’s gender-affirming care clinic can now rest easy that their personal information will not be exposed to a hostile administration,” said Mimi McKenzie, legal director of the Public Interest Law Center, the firm that, alongside the law firm Ballard Sphar, represented four UPMC families seeking to quash the subpoena.

U.S. Chief District Judge Cathy Bissoon shot down the original subpoena in December, saying the DOJ’s actions contained “more than a whiff of ill-intent.”

In an effort to quell the concerns of advocates, the DOJ later asked the court to narrow the scope of the subpoena, saying it would accept anonymized patient information. The department argued the government often handles sensitive information and “courts have long trusted the adequacy of those safeguards.”

Bissoon, in rejecting the argument in March, called those assurances “cold comfort.”

Gender-care services can range from counseling and psychological care, to the prescribing of hormones, puberty blockers and, in some cases, surgeries.

The DOJ, at the time the subpoenas were sent out, said it was in pursuit of uncovering health care fraud.

In a short statement issued alongside the subpoenas, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said: “Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice.”

McKenzie called the DOJ dropping the appeal a win for the patients.

“But it came with a great cost,” McKenzie said. “They faced the possibility of harassment from the federal government and the fear that their private healthcare records would be in the hands of people who think that transgender and nonbinary people shouldn’t exist.”

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