OAKLAND, Calif. — California Attorney General Rob Bonta, joined by attorneys general from 21 states and jurisdictions, recently filed an amicus brief opposing a U.S. Department of Justice subpoena issued to Rhode Island Hospital, arguing the federal action seeks to undermine transgender health care for adolescents.
The DOJ subpoenaed Rhode Island Hospital in an effort to obtain information regarding the provision of gender-affirming care to minors. In the brief, the coalition argued that “the clear purpose of DOJ’s subpoena to RI Hospital is to end transgender healthcare for adolescents.”
According to Attorney General Bonta, the “DOJ attempts to justify its subpoena through a novel and unreasonable interpretation of the FDCA [Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act],” which, “if adopted, will have broad implications far beyond the administration of transgender healthcare.”
He further argued that, by departing from traditional practices, the DOJ is wrongfully criminalizing health care workers, directly impacting health care administration. In support, the brief states that the DOJ “seeks to intimidate medical providers out of offering critical, medically necessary healthcare to transgender youth, one of the most vulnerable populations in Amici States.”
Through this subpoena, the DOJ is making “sweeping requests for sensitive information—including records of all patients who have received a particular type of medical care,” which “appear to represent a radical departure from its prior practice and makes express the ‘policy goal’ of the Executive Branch to harm a politically disfavored minority.”
The group argues that the DOJ “improperly characterizes the lawful practice of a clinician prescribing and communicating with a patient about FDA-approved drugs for off-label uses as a violation of the FDCA’s prohibitions concerning the distribution and labeling of drugs for unapproved uses.”
As noted in a recent press release, “Attorney General Bonta is committed to defending medical providers and their patients from overreach and intimidation by the Trump Administration.” In recognizing these disparities driven by the DOJ, Attorney General Bonta is aiming to mitigate “devastating and far-reaching effects that go far beyond the narrow field of transgender healthcare.”
He further argued that the “DOJ’s groundless attempt to shoehorn routine parts of the off-label prescription and administration of medications into the FDCA’s criminal prohibitions in pursuit of its stated goal of ‘ending’ transgender healthcare threatens an enormous range of medical care in a wide variety of fields,” impacting not only patients but workers as well.
The brief suggests, “The subpoena has nothing at all to do with promoting the rule of law. Rather, this extraordinary overreach is an attempt to subvert the policy and judgment of the states as the traditional regulators of the practice of medicine.”
To support this argument, the brief states that “the federal government aims to prosecute medical providers and hospital administrators for federal crimes based on their routine prescription and administration of medication and communication with patients about the treatments they are receiving.”
As noted by Attorney General Bonta, “even the threat of such prosecution flatly contradicts the well-settled notion that the FDCA does not exist to regulate doctors’ practice of medicine,” despite the subpoena placing “medical providers and hospital administrators in the crosshairs of civil and criminal enforcement mechanisms, including prosecutions, merely for providing this care.”
To combat these actions, the brief “encourages the Court to grant the Child Advocate’s Emergency Motion to Quash the subpoena directed to RI Hospital.”
Attorney General Bonta was joined by the attorneys general of several states and jurisdictions, including Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
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