On Monday, August 10, 2026, the Justice Department asked the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to voluntarily dismiss its appeal of rulings that had blocked its subpoena to UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. The subpoena sought records of minors who received gender-affirming care, including medical records, intake documents, consent forms and parental authorizations tied to puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The department gave no explanation; TribLive reported the withdrawal came on the day its briefs were due, after it had sought three 30-day extensions. The families' lawyers at the Public Interest Law Center said that as a result “that district court ruling is final”; The Advocate noted the appeals court still had to approve the dismissal.
Chief U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon of the Western District of Pennsylvania quashed the subpoena in December 2025, and on March 2, 2026, rejected the department's offer to accept anonymized records. In the March ruling she wrote that the department's “rhetoric regarding gender-affirming care reflects callous indifference, if not abject cruelty,” adding, “There is more than a 'whiff' of ill-intent. Arguably, it is closer to a stench.” Mimi McKenzie, legal director of the Public Interest Law Center, said patients “can now rest easy that their personal information will not be exposed to a hostile administration.”
The retreat is a defeat for the administration's use of subpoenas against hospitals that provided gender-affirming care to minors; the department had sent similar subpoenas to at least 20 hospital systems. It is the UPMC case; McKenzie said the department had withdrawn its appeal in the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia case in May 2026.
Update (October 2, 2026): On September 18, 2026, the Justice Department announced an agreement under which UPMC will stop providing gender-affirming care to minors (see The Justice Department Used Fraudulent-Billing Claims and Grand Jury Subpoenas for Patient Records to End Gender Care for Minors at Two Hospital Systems). UPMC said the agreement protects sensitive patient health information and includes no admission of wrongdoing.
Correction (October 2, 2026): This entry dated Judge Bissoon's first ruling to December 24, 2025; its sources confirm only December 2025. It also pointed readers to an unrelated entry for the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia appeal; that link was removed and the CHOP withdrawal is now attributed to the families' lawyer as reported by TribLive.