Doctors from Harvard Medical School are taking legal action against the Trump administration after articles detailing their research on LGBTQ health issues were removed from a government-run website dedicated to patient safety.
The doctors claim the removal, initiated by a controversial executive order from former President Donald Trump, directly violated their First Amendment rights and undermined public health.
Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Dr. Celeste Royce and Dr. Gordon Schiff filed a lawsuit in federal court in Boston on Tuesday, arguing that the Trump administration’s directive to eliminate references to “gender ideology” resulted in the removal of their articles.
The articles in question had been published on the Patient Safety Network (PSNet), a website managed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The lawsuit alleges that the government’s action imposed a viewpoint-based restriction on the doctors’ ability to engage in a government-run platform that traditionally welcomed private contributions on patient safety.
Dr. Schiff, one of the plaintiffs, emphasized the harmful nature of removing health information related to transgender individuals, pointing out the unique and increased health risks faced by this group. He said, “Censoring information about transgender people or anyone politicians don’t like is against the very mission of public health.”
The case stems from an executive order signed by Trump on January 20, which sought to enforce a strict binary view of gender. The order mandated that agencies remove any reference to “gender ideology” from public-facing materials, including websites and social media.
In the wake of this, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued guidance instructing federal agencies to scrub such mentions.
The articles removed from PSNet include a paper co-authored by Dr. Royce on the diagnosis of endometriosis in transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals. Another article by Dr. Schiff, which discussed suicide risk in LGBTQ communities, was also taken down.
This legal battle is not the first of its kind. Earlier this year, a similar lawsuit by Doctors for America resulted in a federal judge issuing a temporary restraining order, requiring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to restore content that had been removed under Trump’s directive.
The lawsuit, Schiff et al. v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management et al., is currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
The plaintiffs are being represented by ACLU attorneys Jessie Rossman, Scarlet Kim, and Ben Menke of the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School.
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