NEW YORK — A federal judge in Manhattan on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump Justice Department from seizing the medical records of transgender youth from New York City hospitals and cast doubt on the government’s claim that it didn’t want to use the information to prosecute patients.

In a lengthy oral decision announced at a remote hearing, Manhattan Federal Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla said the sweeping subpoena delivered to NYU Langone by the DOJ last month targeting members of a “uniquely vulnerable group” was unconstitutional and jibed with the Trump administration’s intention to demonize and “eradicate an entire population.”

“I cannot conceive of a crime that would require the breadth of disclosure sought in the subpoena,” Failla said. “The plaintiffs’ interest in privacy outweighs the government’s interest in breaching it.”

In addition to granting an emergency request for a temporary restraining order prohibiting disclosure of patients’ medical information, Failla provisionally granted class certification to trans New Yorkers under 18 who have received gender-affirming care in the city since 2020, young adults, and the patients’ families.

A spokesman for the DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“It is no secret that this administration will use every lever in its power to attack transgender people and fulfill its misguided goal to ‘end’ gender-affirming medical care–care that is legal and protected in New York State. Using subpoenas to attain the identities and sensitive health information of transgender young people to effectuate such goals should send chills down the spine of every American,” Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney in the case with the Lambda Legal law firm, said in a statement.

Attorneys for the New York Civil Liberties Union and various firms filed the suit that’s playing out before Failla on June 2 on behalf of three New York City families with transgender youth and two trans young adults who began seeking gender affirming care before they turned 18.

It argues the demands violated patients’ constitutional rights to privacy and to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

The subpoena sent out to NYU Langone Hospitals May 7 sought the names and comprehensive medical records of anyone under 18 treated for gender dysphoria over the last six years. Other hospitals, including the Mount Sinai Health System, are believed to have received similar requests, according to court records.

The May subpoena — issued under the authority of a grand jury in Texas — related to a DOJ investigation into purported violations of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act by drug manufacturers and distributors concerning the branding of medications prescribed to delay puberty and aid gender transition.

A federal magistrate judge in Colorado in January found the government was using the FDCA “as a smokescreen for its true objective of pressuring pediatric hospitals into ending gender-affirming care through commencing vague, suspicionless ‘investigations.’”

Failla similarly doubted the government’s motives on Wednesday.

She questioned the DOJ exploring the matter via a criminal probe after failing to obtain the records in civil cases and sounded a note of skepticism about the assertion that it viewed trans patients as “victims” and had no intention of charging them.

“This court will not blind itself to reality,” the judge said, referencing the timeline of attacks on transgender Americans since President Trump’s return to power.

Trump and his cabinet members have sought to erase trans Americans from public life. The president has described medical care for youth who wish to transition “one of the most prevalent forms of child abuse facing our country today.” His Department of Health and Human Services has proposed prohibiting hospitals that provide care to trans youth from participating in Medicaid and Medicare, removing gender dysphoria from federal disability-based antidiscrimination protections, and other significant rollbacks.

More than two dozen states have banned or severely curtailed gender affirming care for people under 18 since the Supreme Court allowed them to in June 2025. Those states have not banned gender-affirming surgery for minors who identify with the gender they were born as, like breast augmentations for teenage girls or male breast reductions for teenage boys.

The systematic campaign to, as Failla described it, “eradicate” an entire population, ignores conflicting evidence within a major body of research and the guidance of leading medical groups.

Countless peer-reviewed studies, including one published by the American Medical Association in December, have found that denying the necessary care to young people who don’t identify as the sex they were assigned at birth has profoundly detrimental ramifications on their psychiatric well-being, including by increasing the risks of suicide, anxiety and depression.

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