A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump ripped into the Department of Justice for its “appalling” and “reckless” lack of candor in a case involving gender-affirming health care for minors.
Last year, the DOJ began sending out sweeping administrative subpoenas demanding detailed sensitive medical information about minor patients who had received gender-affirming care at hospitals nationwide.
When Rhode Island Hospital (RIH) received a subpoena demanding the names, Social Security numbers, addresses, diagnoses, clinical histories, and family information of its patients, it began negotiating with the DOJ over the subpoena’s applicability and scope, Rhode Island District Court Judge Mary McElroy wrote this week in an order quashing the subpoena.
In February, the DOJ suddenly stopped communicating with the hospital, only to then accuse the RIH of failing to comply with the subpoena, abruptly recommence negotiations, and then suddenly file a petition in Texas to try to enforce the original subpoena.
In her order, McElroy wrote the DOJ’s tactics were “unsettling,” and that it had engaged in “subterfuge” to try to end the negotiations.
“As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors… will play fair and be honest with counterparts and the judiciary,” she wrote. “DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case.”
The government’s attorneys “misrepresented and withheld information” under oath in an “obvious effort” to hide its investigative tactics, which had already been rejected by other courts, McElroy continued.
When the attorneys were called before the court to explain their conduct, the senior attorney in the case “sat silently by as his counterpart, a junior attorney who has been practicing law for approximately six months and had no relevant information, was forced to answer questions about DOJ’s blatant disregard for the proper course of negotiations,” she fumed.
Above the Law reported that the senior attorney in question was Jordan Campbell, whose official DOJ bio says he founded “the first and only firm dedicated to exclusively representing detransitioners and victims of radical gender ideology.”
McElroy was originally nominated to the bench in 2015 by then-President Barack Obama, but her nomination stalled in the Senate. In 2018, she was renominated by Trump and eventually confirmed in late 2019.
In her ruling, she wrote that the Rhode Island court shared the sentiment expressed by other federal courts that the government can no longer be taken at its word.
Her scathing assessment comes as the DOJ is trying to shield its attorneys from being punished for misconduct, including suing the Washington, D.C., bar association in a bid to block it from disbarring Jeffrey Clark, one of the architects of Trump’s failed attempt to overthrow the 2020 election results.
The department has also proposed a rule that would give the attorney general power to prevent state bar disciplinary authorities from investigating current or former DOJ attorneys. That followed other efforts to weaken the Office of Professional Responsibility and erode whistleblower and civil service protections, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law reported last month.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the DOJ for comment.
