A federal judge has issued a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration’s effort to erase medical research referencing transgender individuals, calling the removal of two articles from a government-run website a clear violation of the First Amendment.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin of Massachusetts ruled Friday that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) engaged in “viewpoint discrimination” when it deleted medical publications authored by two Harvard Medical School professors because the content acknowledged transgender and LGBTQ populations.
The articles had appeared on the Patient Safety Network (PSNet), a public resource run by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The takedowns followed a January 2025 directive by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) ordering agencies to remove “outward facing media” that “promote gender ideology,” in compliance with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump days earlier. The order defines sex as strictly binary and is part of Trump’s renewed push to restrict federal recognition of gender diversity.
Dr. Gordon Schiff and Dr. Celeste Royce, the Harvard-affiliated physicians behind the flagged articles, sued the government in March after being told their work would only be reinstated if they removed terms like “transgender,” “nonbinary,” and “LGBTQ.”
One of the removed pieces discussed suicide risks among high-risk groups, including LGBTQ individuals. Another piece focused on endometriosis and noted that this condition “can occur in trans and non-gender-conforming individuals.” When Dr. Royce offered to revise her language to say endometriosis was “a rare but possible diagnosis in men,” HHS rejected the change, asserting the condition cannot be diagnosed in men, effectively contradicting the broader reality of trans-inclusive medicine.
Judge Sorokin sided decisively with the plaintiffs, granting a preliminary injunction requiring the restoration of both articles in full. “This is a flagrant violation of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights as private speakers on a limited public forum,” he wrote, emphasizing that the articles represented the authors’ speech, not that of the government.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU of Massachusetts, celebrated the ruling as a victory for academic freedom and inclusive health care. “The court was clearly troubled by what even the government admitted was viewpoint discrimination,” said ACLU attorney Rachel Davidson after the hearing.
During court proceedings, Assistant U.S. Attorney Shawna Yen conceded the point. Sorokin repeatedly questioned how the government could constitutionally justify the takedowns if they were based solely on content the administration found ideologically objectionable.
The ruling also highlights dysfunction in the policy’s execution. Government officials used imprecise word searches to identify “offending” articles and provided no advance notice to authors before removal. Yen further revealed logistical barriers to restoring the articles, noting that the site is no longer being updated and that the employee capable of manually restoring the posts is slated for layoff by the end of June.
Beyond First Amendment concerns, the lawsuit challenges the legality of the OPM’s directive under the Administrative Procedure Act, alleging that the agency overstepped its authority and offered no reasonable justification for instructing other federal agencies on content policy.
For transgender individuals and allies, the case represents another front in the fight against censorship of medically accurate information. The takedown and legal battle show how deeply politicized public health has become and how real the threat remains when government power is used to silence trans-inclusive voices.
The ruling requires the restoration of the doctors’ articles. Whether the government complies and whether PSNet will remain accessible at all remains uncertain. But for now, the court has affirmed what trans communities already know: acknowledgment is not ideology, and erasure has no place in public health.
