Office of the
Illinois Attorney General
Kwame Raoul

Chicago — Attorney General Kwame Raoul, as part of a coalition of 19 attorneys general, filed an amicus brief in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts opposing the Trump administration’s attempts to subpoena documents, including patient records, related to gender-affirming care at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH). 

 “Gender-affirming care for transgender youth is lawful, essential and lifesaving treatment that supports the right of all individuals to live as their authentic selves,” Raoul said. “The Trump administration’s focus on hospitals and health care providers that offer a wide range of care to pediatric patients is cruel, unlawful and does not make children safer. The real result is that the Department of Justice is diverting valuable law enforcement resources from catching real child predators and instead attempting to bully health care providers to stop providing the care their patients require.” 

Medical experts, including every major national medical association, agree that gender-affirming medical care is not only necessary for many transgender young people, but that in some cases it is lifesaving. Denying such care has been shown to worsen mental health outcomes, including increased rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. 

Raoul and the attorneys general note that since President Trump took office, his administration has attempted to end lawful medical care that it disfavors. On day one, Trump issued an executive order declaring gender identity a “false” idea. A week later, the president issued another executive order attempting to strip federal funding from institutions that provide lifesaving gender-affirming care for young people under the age of 19, with the ultimate goal of ending all gender-affirming care for adolescents. In April, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo directing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate health care providers and pharmaceutical companies that offer gender-affirming care. 

On June 11, the DOJ sent BCH an administrative subpoena, seeking a broad range of highly sensitive and confidential records related to the hospital’s provision of gender-affirming care, including personnel records for nearly all BCH employees and extensive patient records. A federal judge voided the DOJ’s subpoena in full on Sept. 9, ruling that it was a clear attempt to interfere with Massachusetts’ right to protect gender-affirming care within its borders and to intimidate BCH from providing gender-affirming care and its patients from seeking it. The Trump administration has filed a motion asking the court to set aside its ruling.

In their brief, Raoul and the attorneys general urge the court to uphold its prior ruling quashing the DOJ’s subpoena. The coalition argues that the federal government is clearly seeking to intimidate medical providers from offering critical and medically necessary care to transgender youth, even in states like Illinois where such care is legal and protected. Further, the attorneys general contend that if the DOJ’s interpretation of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) were accepted, practitioners in entire fields of medicine could be at risk of criminal conviction merely for offering evidence-based treatments. As the coalition argues, this risk is particularly acute for the pediatric field, where off-label prescriptions are extremely common. 

This amicus brief is the most recent in Raoul’s ongoing and extensive efforts to protect the rights of transgender individuals. In August, Raoul co-led a multistate lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict access to medically necessary health care for transgender and nonbinary youth. 

Earlier this month, Raoul co-led a coalition of attorneys general in filing an amicus brief supporting a legal challenge to President Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives and programs that support transgender individuals.

In September, Raoul and a coalition of attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over its threats to pull funding for longstanding reproductive and sexual health education programs for youth if the educational materials include language affirming young people’s gender identity. Raoul also co-led a multistate coalition opposing proposed changes to the Department of Education’s biennial Civil Rights Data Collection that would halt data collection on nonbinary students, remove “gender identity” and “sex characteristics” from the OCR’s definitions of harassment and bullying on the basis of sex, cease data collection on harassment and bullying on the basis of gender identity, and remove “harassment on the basis of actual or perceived sex” from the definitions of “rape” and “sexual assault.”

In March, Raoul and a coalition of attorneys general submitted comments to the U.S. Department of State opposing changes to the passport application process that would prevent transgender and nonbinary individuals from obtaining a passport that matches their gender identity. And in February, Raoul and a coalition of attorneys general filed an amicus brief in support of a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s executive order banning transgender Americans from serving in the military.

Joining Raoul in submitting the amicus brief are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.