In Scathing Ruling, Judge Blocks DOJ from Obtaining Medical Data for Trans Youth |
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In a scathing ruling released Wednesday night, federal judge Mary McElroy — a Trump appointee — condemned Department of Justice lawyers for misrepresenting facts to multiple federal courts in an effort to obtain the names and medical records of transgender youth at Rhode Island Hospital. McElroy accused DOJ attorneys outright of “subterfuge,” found that a senior DOJ official had made sworn statements that were “at best, deceptive, if not intentionally and knowingly false,” and quashed the administrative subpoena in full. The case landed before McElroy after the Rhode Island Child Advocate — a statutory state office tasked with protecting children — filed an emergency motion accusing the DOJ of forum-shopping the subpoena to a friendly judge in Texas while lying about both its demands and the negotiating history with the hospital, keeping patients, the hospital, and the courts themselves in the dark.
The opinion’s opening paragraphs read like a moral indictment of the Department itself. “The United States Department of Justice (’DOJ’) possesses immense prosecutorial authority and discretion. As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary,” McElroy wrote.
DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case. It has misrepresented and withheld information to both this Court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. It did so in an obvious effort to shield it’s recent investigative tactics — previously rejected by every other court to review them — from this Court’s review, in favor of a distant forum that DOJ deems friendly to its political positions. Its representatives have, under oath, misrepresented salient facts. It has misled the parties with whom it was negotiating in Rhode Island, who have now been placed in an untenable and unprecedented procedural position. And when its attorneys came to this Court to explain their conduct, the senior attorney — who was present at many of the events that took place in this 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.
DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case. It has misrepresented and withheld information to both this Court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. It did so in an obvious effort to shield it’s recent investigative tactics —........