A Trump-appointed federal judge referred DOJ attorneys to disciplinary proceedings for alleged misrepresentations in a bid for transgender minors' medical records.
U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy of the District of Rhode Island referred Department of Justice attorneys to disciplinary proceedings on June 6, 2026, finding they made false representations and withheld material information from the court during their pursuit of transgender minors' medical records from Rhode Island Hospital [1]. The referral exposes the attorneys to sanctions including public reprimand or suspension from the Rhode Island bar [2].
The disciplinary referral follows McElroy's May 2026 order quashing a HIPAA-authorized administrative subpoena the DOJ had directed at Rhode Island Hospital and its affiliate, Hasbro Children's Hospital, seeking records related to gender-affirming care provided to minors [1]. McElroy found at that stage that the subpoena was issued in bad faith [3]. The June referral escalated that finding into a formal candor proceeding targeting the individual government lawyers who appeared before her, including DOJ attorney Lisa K. Hsiao [2]. The case sits in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, in Providence [1].
The referral is procedurally significant on two levels. First, McElroy is herself a Trump appointee, a fact that forecloses easy characterization of the ruling as partisan resistance [2]. Second, federal judges rarely refer government attorneys, as opposed to private litigants' counsel, to bar disciplinary bodies. A referral of this type signals that the court concluded the conduct fell outside the range of aggressive-but-permissible advocacy and crossed into misrepresentation sufficient to warrant formal professional consequences [3]. The underlying HIPAA subpoena was already an outlier: courts have long treated medical records, particularly those of minors, as entitled to robust privacy protection, and administrative subpoenas that target a defined class of patients based on the nature of their treatment draw heightened scrutiny [1].
The Rhode Island disciplinary authority will now determine whether to pursue a formal complaint, conduct an investigation, or dismiss the referral. The DOJ attorneys named in the order retain the right to respond and contest the findings before any discipline is imposed [2]. Separately, the underlying question of whether federal prosecutors may use HIPAA's administrative-subpoena mechanism to compel hospitals to produce records of gender-affirming care for minors remains unsettled law, and the Providence proceedings may attract amicus participation or parallel litigation in other circuits where similar subpoenas have been reported [3].