Federal Court Opens Records in Colorado Dispute Over Gender Treatment Inquiry

By Michael Karlik | Colorado Politics

A federal judge ordered last month that the public be able to access the filings in Children’s Hospital Colorado’s legal challenge to a U.S. Department of Justice subpoena seeking a broad range of documents about patients, employees and communications.

Children’s Colorado sought to keep its case shielded from public view, arguing that disclosing the details of the Justice Department’s request would traumatize patients and providers who work with puberty blockers and hormone treatments — the subject of the government’s request for documents.

But in a Nov. 17 order, U.S. Magistrate Judge Cyrus Y. Chung noted the subpoena’s existence and the nature of services Children’s Colorado provides were already matters of public record.

“To be sure, the petitioner demonstrates fear and anxiety over the subpoena at the heart of this case. It also points out violence and threats that have historically targeted hospitals providing gender-affirming care,” he wrote. “But it does not show how adjudicating this case publicly, rather than under restriction, threatens additional, concrete harm so as to overcome the strong presumption of public access to judicial records.”

Over the summer, the Justice Department served a subpoena on Children’s Colorado and other hospital systems. The government requested documents, from January 2020 onward, that identify patients, reveal personnel files and disclose communications with the pharmaceutical industry.

The demand was aimed at treatment involving puberty blockers and hormone therapy for children. The Justice Department was focused on gender-related care, which it defined as “any medical, surgical, psychological, or social treatment provided to individuals to alter their physical appearance or social presentation to resemble characteristics typically associated with the opposite biological sex.”

The investigation was rooted in multiple executive orders President Donald Trump issued, decrying “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex” and seeking to “rigorously enforce all laws” to deter certain treatment for children seeking to delay puberty or identify with a gender that does not correlate to their sex at birth. A federal judge in Maryland subsequently blocked the portions of the orders withholding related grant funding.

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