Justice Department asks Texas court to compel Rhode Island Hospital to produce pediatric gender‑affirming care records

The Justice Department has asked a federal judge in Texas to enforce an administrative subpoena against Rhode Island Hospital, saying the hospital has largely failed to turn over records tied to pediatric gender-affirming care.

The request is laid out in a petition filed April 30 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, and announced Friday in a Justice Department press release. It is not a court ruling on the merits of the government’s investigation or on whether the hospital violated any law. Instead, it asks the court to order the hospital to comply with a subpoena the department says it served in July 2025.

According to the petition, the Justice Department is investigating “the distribution of certain prescription drugs to minors with gender dysphoria and related disorders, including puberty blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones.” The department said it issued the subpoena under administrative authority in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, as part of an investigation into possible federal health care offenses.

The filing was brought by the Justice Department’s Civil Division, through its Enforcement and Affirmative Litigation Branch, together with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Texas.

The petition says the subpoena sought 15 categories of documents and set an Aug. 7, 2025, deadline for Rhode Island Hospital to respond. The government alleges the hospital has not complied and, in response to those 15 requests, has produced only one six-page document.

The Justice Department also says in the petition that it is examining possible violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, advancing a legal theory that includes possible misbranding involving the drugs at issue. That is the government’s position in the filing, not a finding by the court.

Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in the department’s press release: “The Department of Justice expects and demands full compliance with validly issued subpoenas like the one at issue here. Non-compliance with lawful process is never an option.”

As of Friday, no public response from Rhode Island Hospital or its parent system to the filing had been identified in the available research.

The case adds to a wider federal enforcement push that emerged last year. A June 11, 2025, Civil Division memo laying out enforcement priorities identified gender-affirming care as an area for investigation and enforcement focus. Since then, similar Justice Department subpoenas to other providers have also sparked legal fights over patient records, provider compliance and the government’s use of federal health care and drug-law authorities.

Those disputes have already reached court elsewhere. Challenges have involved Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and in October 2025 a federal judge in Washington state granted a motion to quash a Justice Department subpoena issued to telehealth provider QueerDoc.

The Rhode Island Hospital filing now puts the question before a judge in Fort Worth: whether the court will compel the hospital to comply with the subpoena.