Judge Shields NYU Langone, Mount Sinai Records From DOJ

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Justice Department from obtaining private health records of minors who received gender-affirming care at New York City health systems. On June 24, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York issued a temporary restraining order covering institutions including NYU Langone Health and Mount Sinai Health System, according to Becker's Hospital Review.

The order pauses federal efforts to access the sensitive records while the court weighs the underlying legal challenge. For the hospitals, it offers short-term cover from the difficult choice between complying with a federal subpoena and protecting patient confidentiality.

The dispute matters beyond New York. It tests how far federal investigators can reach into protected clinical data tied to politically contested care, and it signals that health systems may increasingly find their patient records at the center of legal and political battles. Hospitals nationwide are watching how courts balance subpoena power against patient privacy, a question with no settled answer yet.