A growing legal dispute over the Justice Department’s investigation into hospitals that provide transgender-related drugs and surgeries to children is escalating into a broader judicial turf war, with Democrat-appointed federal judges in multiple states increasingly stepping into proceedings that legal scholars argue are out of their jurisdictions.The latest developments came Tuesday, when a federal judge in Maryland weighed a request for nationwide class-action protections against the DOJ’s records requests, while a judge in California moved to halt enforcement of a Texas grand jury subpoena seeking patient records from a children’s hospital.The disputes stem from a nationwide DOJ investigation that began last summer, examining whether hospitals and clinics that performed transgender-related drug treatments or surgical procedures on minors violated federal laws involving fraud, misbranding of drugs, or improper billing practices. President Donald Trump’s administration has sought records from hospitals across the country, arguing the information is necessary to determine whether federal laws were broken.
Maryland: Judge questions nationwide class request
In Maryland, U.S. District Judge Julie Rubin, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, heard arguments Tuesday over whether to certify a nationwide class of families seeking to prevent the government from obtaining medical records connected to minors who received transgender medical treatments.
