The Trump administration has strong-armed the University of Michigan’s statewide hospital system over its provision of transgender health care services for minors, sending a subpoena in recent weeks to University of Michigan Health, TPM has learned.
The investigation has prompted the university to suspend gender-affirming care at its hospitals for those under 19, the university told TPM in an exclusive statement.
“The University of Michigan, including Michigan Medicine, is one of multiple institutions across the country that has received a federal subpoena as part of a criminal and civil investigation into gender-affirming care for minors,” the statement reads. “In light of that investigation, and given escalating external threats and risks, we will no longer provide gender affirming hormonal therapies and puberty blocker medications for minors.”
For the Trump administration, University of Michigan Health’s decision is a win. In this case, federal officials have used the prospect of a lengthy civil or criminal investigation to pressure the hospital system.
One source familiar with the university’s decision-making told TPM that University of Michigan Health’s leadership interpreted the subpoena as a threat that could portend criminal prosecution. Per the source, individual doctors received a hold order not to destroy documents.
The demand came in the form of an administrative subpoena, per the source. The demand is similar to a subpoena received by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and entered as an exhibit into a lawsuit earlier this month, the source said.
The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.
Per an internal university memo obtained by TPM, University of Michigan Health first received a subpoena on July 14 that indicated the DOJ was pursuing a civil and criminal investigation.
DOJ attorneys had indicated they were investigating the doctors on suspicion of abusing their authority to prescribe medication, among other potential charges, the source said. The source said that those at the University of Michigan Health system had heard for a few weeks that they were next in line.
“We recognize the gravity and impact of this decision for our patients and our community. We are working closely with all those impacted, and we will continuously support the well-being of our patients, their families, and our teams,” the hospital system added in its statement to TPM. “We are deeply grateful to our clinicians for their unyielding commitment to providing the highest quality care, and to all of our team members for their dedication to helping our patients, and to supporting each other, as we navigate these changes together.”
The targeting of the health system appears to be part of a broader salvo from the Trump administration, as it takes further steps to threaten hospitals into backing away from providing gender-affirming care.
The FBI posted a tipline on X in early June, seeking names of “any hospitals, clinics, or practitioners” “mutilating children under the guise of gender-affirming care.”
Trump’s DOJ announced on July 9 that it had sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics “involved in performing transgender medical procedures on children.” University of Michigan Health received its subpoena a few days later. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and UChicago Medicine have been reported to be among the institutions that received subpoenas.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel joined a multistate lawsuit on August 1 — two weeks after the University of Michigan health system received its subpoena — to block the administration from using threats of criminal prosecution to restrict care.
Significant evidence has emerged in recent weeks that the Trump administration is aggressively pursuing investigations into other providers of transgender health care, particularly for minors. The administrative subpoena to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, filed this month in a lawsuit brought by state attorneys general, seeks a broad range of documents relating to “puberty blockers,” “gender-related care,” and other topics related to transgender care. In that case, the subpoena directed the hospital to appear before the DOJ’s consumer protection branch.
It cited a statute that allows investigators to issue administrative subpoenas for investigations into federal health care-related offenses for use in either civil or criminal cases.
For the University of Michigan hospital system’s administrators and clinicians, the subpoena left little clarity on how to fight back: There’s no criminal charge that they can defend against, no new law or federal rule interpretation to challenge in court, the person familiar emphasized. All they have, the person said, is the prospect of heavy legal fees and, for the doctors, a looming fear of potentially losing their medical licenses while under the cloud of an endless investigation.
The University of Michigan may have been in the Trump administration’s sights already, as it had targeted the hospital system over a separate gender-affirming care-related issue earlier in the summer.
Back in June, Trump’s HHS launched an investigation into the case of a physician’s assistant in University of Michigan Health system who claimed that she was fired after refusing to perform gender-affirming care or use patients’ preferred pronouns under a religious exemption. Valerie Kloosterman’s case was taken up by the First Liberty Institute, a right-wing law firm that sits on the advisory board of Project 2025.
“The investigation will probe whether the health system has policies consistent with the Church Amendments for accommodating health care workers with religious beliefs or moral convictions that are contrary to certain procedures or certain health service programs,” HHS’ Office for Civil Rights said in a press release.
A federal judge dismissed Kloosterman’s lawsuit, ruling she had to proceed to arbitration. Her attorneys appealed, and the case is currently before the 6th Circuit.
Rachel Crandall Crocker, co-founder of TransGender Michigan, told TPM that the university’s medical system is one of two transgender health care providers in the state. Losing it will massively complicate the lives of transgender Michiganders, she said.
“It would leave a big hole in services,” Crocker told TPM. “A lot of people would be out of luck.”
The focus on Michigan is just one front in an onslaught from an administration fixated on making health care, legal protection and self-identification much more fraught for the trans community. Its right-wing media allies have derived hours of content from the skirmishes, contributing to the souring of public opinion on trans rights.
“The approach now can best be described as misleading, punitive, and invasive of adults’ ability to make their own healthcare decisions in consultation with their providers and, for young people, of the privacy of parents, youth, and their healthcare providers, all informed by experience and expertise in the field,” Suzanne Goldberg, cofounder of Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, told TPM.
Shorter Trump: Any damned religious nut has the right to tell a parent how to care for their child.
So how does this play out? If an XX teen is producing too much androgen is the provision of Prednisone to block that production gender affirming care or not?
The Hypocritic Oath: First bend the knee.
Those fucking cowards.
How many cases are we talking about?