1. United States
2. Mich.
3. Letter

The Trump administration's Department of Justice is trying to force Rhode Island Hospital to hand over private medical records of transgender patients by filing in the Northern District of Texas, 1,800 miles away. This is blatant forum shopping designed to bypass the law. You must intervene to stop this abuse of the justice system. Federal judges in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Washington have already rejected identical subpoenas, with one ruling the DOJ acted in "bad faith" to "harass and intimidate" hospitals and "dissuade patients from seeking care." Rather than accept these losses, the DOJ exploited a HIPAA loophole to refile in Texas, where cases are guaranteed to land before Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the sole civil judge in Amarillo. The DOJ's own filing dismisses four federal judges as "mistaken" in a footnote. The subpoena seeks patient identities, medical records, and doctor names. The DOJ explicitly states it wants to "pursue patients directly" and interview them as part of a criminal investigation based on a legal theory no court has ever accepted: that routine off-label prescribing, which accounts for 25% of all prescriptions, constitutes federal drug crimes. This is government intimidation of doctors and patients. Condemn this forum shopping publicly and demand the DOJ withdraw this petition immediately.