In Re: Motion to Quash Admin. Subpoena to RI Hosp. v.

── In Re: Motion to Quash Admin. Subpoena to RI Hosp. v. ── Court: Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Date: May 20, 2026 Category: General United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit _____________________ No. 26-1568 IN RE: MOTION TO QUASH ADMINISTRATIVE SUBPOENA TO RHODE ISLAND HOSPITAL __________________ CHILD ADVOCATE FOR RHODE ISLAND, et al., Petitioners, Appellees, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent, Appellant. __________________ Before Gelpí, Montecalvo, and Dunlap, Circuit Judges. __________________ ORDER OF COURT Entered: May 19, 2026 This motion for an injunction pending appeal concerns a subpoena issued in July 2025 to Rhode Island Hospital (the "Hospital") by the Department of Justice ("DOJ") pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3486 (the "Subpoena"). The Subpoena sought sensitive medical records, among them the personally identifying information and personal health information of children who had received gender-affirming care from the Hospital. Even after the compliance date for the Subpoena came and went, the parties continued to negotiate the particulars of the Hospital's compliance. Amidst those negotiations, the DOJ moved ex parte to enforce the Subpoena in the Northern District of Texas on April 30, 2026. Later that day, that court ordered the Hospital to comply with the Subpoena (the "April Texas Order"). Once it learned of the April Texas Order, the Hospital moved for a stay in that district court and, when its motion was denied, appealed to the Fifth Circuit.1 The Hospital's appeal before the Fifth Circuit remains pending. Shortly thereafter, the Child Advocate for the State of Rhode Island (the "Child Advocate"), the state official charged with protecting the legal rights of children in state care, moved to quash the Subpoena in the District of Rhode Island. On May 13, the District of Rhode Island granted the Child Advocate's motion (the "Rhode Island Order"). The district court found that the Subpoena lacked a congressionally-authorized purpose, was issued for an improper purpose, and violated the Fourteenth Amendment privacy rights of the Hospital's child patients.2 The Rhode Island Order quashed the Subpoena and enjoined the DOJ from seeking or receiving patient-identifying information or protected health information responsive to the Subpoena. The DOJ timely appealed the Rhode Island Order. Yesterday, the Northern District of Texas -- concluding that the Rhode Island Order enjoined the Subpoena but not the April Texas Order enforcing it -- ordered the Hospital to turn over all records responsive to the Subpoena by this evening to that court for in camera safekeeping "pending the outcome of the appeals" of the April Texas Order and Rhode Island Order before the Fifth and First Circuits, respectively (the "May Texas Order"). In re Admin. Subpoena No. 25- 1431-032, No. 4:26-mc-00006-O, Dkt. No 26 at 5 (N.D. Tex. May 18, 2026). Now, the Child Advocate asks us to grant an injunction pending appeal that would order the Hospital not to turn responsive records over to anyone. In deciding that request, we set aside a host of procedural problems, such as whether the Child Advocate may obtain an injunction against the Hospital that would subject the Hospital to mutually irreconcilable orders issued by courts in two different federal circuits, whether the injunction the Child Advocate now requests would be an impermissible collateral attack on the May Texas Order, or whether the Child Advocate may obtain such an order -- against a nonpart