SHOCKING — JUDGE Blasts the DOJ for INTENTIONALLY MISLEADING Court!

Department of Justice seal on American flag background.

A federal judge has accused the Department of Justice of misleading a court to seize six years of private medical records belonging to transgender minors — and then blocked the subpoena entirely, handing the DOJ its eighth straight loss in this ongoing records campaign.

Story Snapshot

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy voided a Department of Justice (DOJ) subpoena targeting roughly six years of confidential medical records from Rhode Island Hospital’s transgender youth patients.
Judge McElroy’s written ruling stated the DOJ “misled the court” by withholding key facts when it obtained the original subpoena from a Texas federal judge in April 2026.
The ruling marks the eighth consecutive legal defeat for the DOJ in its broader campaign to obtain hospital records related to gender-affirming care for minors.
The Rhode Island Child Advocate filed an emergency motion to quash the subpoena on May 4, 2026, calling it an “unprecedented intrusion” into children’s private medical information.

Judge Calls Out DOJ Misconduct Directly

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy did not mince words in her written decision. She declared that the DOJ “has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case” and found that prosecutors “misled the court by not providing all of the facts” when they obtained the original subpoena from a Texas federal judge at the end of April 2026. That initial subpoena was issued without Rhode Island Hospital or affected families having any opportunity to contest it beforehand.

The DOJ’s original subpoena sought approximately six years of medical records from Rhode Island Hospital, the state’s largest hospital provider of gender-affirming care for minors. The department had framed its request as a lawful investigative action and publicly demanded “full compliance” from the hospital, which had declined to hand over the records. Judge McElroy’s ruling nullified the subpoena in full, blocking the records transfer hours before a compliance deadline.

BREAKING: Judge McElroy quashes DOJ's Rhode Island Hospital subpoena in full, calling out DOJ's conduct as "misrepresent[ing] salient facts" under oath. "[T]he Court GRANTS both Motions to Quash and enjoins the DOJ from seeking or receiving any documents related to this now… https://t.co/4XR15tLmIJ pic.twitter.com/eXk9XxYjAT

— Chris “Law Dork” Geidner (@chrisgeidner) May 13, 2026

A Pattern of Forum Shopping and Legal Setbacks

The DOJ’s strategy in this case drew scrutiny because it obtained the original enforcement order from a Texas federal court — not from a Rhode Island court — despite the hospital being located in Rhode Island. Critics, including the Rhode Island American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), argued this forum selection was designed to secure a favorable ruling before any affected party could respond. The Rhode Island Child Advocate filed an emergency motion to quash the subpoena on May 4, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island.

Legal observers noted this ruling represents the eighth straight courtroom defeat for the DOJ in its broader subpoena campaign targeting hospital records related to gender-affirming care for minors. A Texas federal court had previously ordered the hospital to comply after finding it failed to respond to a subpoena served in July 2025, but Rhode Island’s federal court took the opposing view, ultimately siding with the hospital and the families whose children’s records were at stake.

Privacy, Process, and What the Ruling Means

At the core of Judge McElroy’s decision is a fundamental question about the integrity of ex parte legal processes — situations where only one side presents arguments to a judge before an order is issued. Administrative subpoenas are common federal enforcement tools, but legal scholars have long warned that their one-sided issuance creates information asymmetry. When the government withholds material facts from the issuing court, as Judge McElroy found occurred here, the entire basis for the subpoena collapses.

Whatever one’s view on gender-affirming care for minors, the judicial finding that federal prosecutors withheld facts to obtain a secret court order targeting children’s private medical records is a serious institutional problem. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) exists precisely to protect patients — including children — from unauthorized disclosure of sensitive medical information. A government that bypasses those protections through procedural maneuvering, and then misrepresents facts to a court to enforce the bypass, undermines the rule of law that conservatives have long championed. Judge McElroy’s ruling reasserts that oversight and accountability apply to the federal government too.