Rhode Island Hospital has turned over 112,647 pages of records relating to the gender-affirming care it provides to minors to a Texas federal court, according to a court filing from last week.
Since May, the records have been turned over every two weeks, with the last filing coming on Oct. 16. The process, which includes de-identifying the data to protect the identity of the patients, has taken over 3,500 hours of dedicated time, according to the filings.
Attorneys for Brown Health wrote in the filing that the record transfer will be completed in roughly four months, though they added that variables outside their control might cause delays.
In April, Chief District Judge Reed O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, ordered Rhode Island Hospital — the largest hospital in Rhode Island and a part of the Brown University Health system — to comply with a DOJ subpoena for the records within 14 days or risk being held in contempt of court.
In May, several legal organizations, including the Lawyers’ Committee of R.I. and American Civil Liberties Union of R.I., filed an emergency petition on behalf of the Rhode Island Office of the Child Advocate. Soon after, R.I. District Court Judge Mary McElroy — a Trump appointee — ordered the process halted.
“As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors … will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the Judiciary. (The) DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case,” she wrote in her decision, noting that its attorneys attempted to mislead the court in several instances.
In a statement emailed to The Herald, the DOJ called the allegations “without merit.”
“Our attorneys did not misrepresent facts, withhold relevant information or otherwise mislead the Court. The Department stands behind its attorneys without reservation and has appealed the District Court’s erroneous order,” the statement reads.
Later in May, O’Connor ordered Brown Health to turn the data over to his court to be held privately while the appeals process plays out in the First and Fifth Circuits — respectively one of the most liberal and most conservative circuits in the country.
Should there be a circuit split, the case could potentially be elevated to the Supreme Court, according to Kevin Hubbard, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for R.I.
The First Circuit later denied the legal organizations’ emergency motion to stop the data transfer, writing that they had not demonstrated “irreparable harm” as the DOJ filed a motion that stated the medical records would be anonymized and de-identified going forward.
“These are the most sensitive medical records that a person could have,” Hubbard said, adding that the documents include sensitive information about family history, trauma and potential suicidal ideation.
“Everyone should be able to feel secure about the privacy of their personal medical records,” Jessica Peters, associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior, wrote in an email to The Herald. “Targeting a particularly vulnerable group with this invasion of privacy and potentially turning their personal medical records into ways to attack them, their parents and their providers seems intended to serve as a threat across the board.”
The DOJ investigation hinges on whether hospital officials allowed gender-affirming care to be provided to minors to treat gender dysphoria — defined as “when someone experiences distress and/or impairment due to mismatch between their gender identity and sex assigned at birth,” Peters wrote.
Treating gender dysphoria with medication is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but their website notes that doctors “generally may prescribe” approved medication for unapproved use.
“We are hopeful that as this case proceeds in the courts, we will ultimately be successful in protecting the disclosure of this very personal medical information from the federal government and vindicating the privacy rights of patients from these heavy-handed tactics of intimidation,” Steven Brown, the executive director of ACLU R.I., wrote in an email to The Herald.
Talia is a metro section editor covering the health and environment and community and culture beats. She is a junior from Bethesda, MD studying history and international and public affairs. In her free time, she enjoys exploring Providence one wrong turn at a time.
