How ACT UP Changed the Face of AIDS and Activism

A McCarthy-era effort to report LGBTQ people to the government, classify queerness as a mental disorder, and overall push queer people from public life is taking similar shape today.

(New York, NY, June 1, 2026) – Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) today filed a federal class action lawsuit challenging the Attorney General’s and U.S. Department of Justice’s efforts to compel healthcare institutions in New York City, including NYU Langone Hospitals, to hand over the identities and sensitive health information of transgender youth who received gender-affirming medical care between 2020 and 2026. Lambda Legal, the ACLU, and NYCLU brought the lawsuit on behalf of three families with minor children and two young adults who received gender-affirming medical care as minors at hospitals in New York City during those years. The legal advocates are also asking the court to certify a class of all impacted patients and families whose identities and medical records are being sought. The lawsuit was filed after NYU Langone Health received a subpoena purportedly under the authority of a federal grand jury empaneled in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas demanding patient identities and sensitive health information in the most recent escalation of the Trump Administration’s across-the-board attacks on healthcare for transgender adolescents. Other New York City hospitals are believed to have received similar subpoenas. The suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, asks the court to protect the patients’ privacy rights and prevent the disclosure of their identities and their deeply personal medical histories. “The Trump Administration has been clear that it will use every tool it has to harass and intimidate hospitals into shutting down necessary and, at times, lifesaving care for transgender youth,” Lambda Legal Senior Counsel and Director of Constitutional Law Practice Karen Loewy said. “But we will not allow the privacy rights of those youth and their families to be sacrificed as DOJ abuses its authority.” “These subpoenas are a baseless intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship, demanding medical professionals substitute their expertise for the Trump administration’s politics,” said Elizabeth Gill, Senior Counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project. “By weaponizing federal investigations, the administration is trying to scare hospitals into dropping patients and abandoning families. As courts across the country have already told this administration, this heavy-handed overreach has nothing to do with fraud prevention; it is a direct attempt by politicians to interfere with the New York’s exercise of its police power to ensure the health and welfare of its residents, override parental rights, and block families from making their own private healthcare decisions.” "New York's laws emphatically embrace the common-sense idea that transgender young people and their families deserve the strongest possible protections for their sensitive medical records, and to have access to the care they and their doctors agree that they need," said Bobby Hodgson, Deputy Legal Director at the New York Civil Liberties Union. "The Trump administration is trying to intimidate healthcare providers, scare families, and erode New Yorkers' fundamental privacy protections. But the Constitution doesn't permit these tactics." The lawsuit argues that allowing the Attorney General and DOJ to require hospitals like NYU Langone to reveal the identities of both patients and their parents and to turn over medical records containing diagnoses, assessments, courses of treatment, and other deeply personal health information in service of abusive targeting of providers of gender-affirming medical care would violate patients’ constitutional rights to privacy and to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. It also asserts that for NYU Langone to comply in turning over this information would breach duties of confidentiality under New York law. The legal advocates are also asking for a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking enforcement of the subpoena ahead of a June 10 deadline for turning over the health data. Today’s filing can be found here.

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union condemned a bill that passed today in the U.S. House of Representatives threatening to censor educators nationwide and compelling them to out transgender students against their will. Relying on the definitions advanced by a Trump administration executive order that has already censored government workers, doctors, scientists, artists, and historical records, H.R. 2616 would prohibit any school that receives federal funding from teaching “concepts related to gender ideology.” It could also forcibly out students who are transgender to their families before they feel ready or even safe doing so. “Every child in this country deserves the same opportunity to thrive as their peers, and that includes transgender students,” said Mike Zamore, National Director for Policy & Government Affairs for the ACLU. “Instead of strengthening that basic promise for all students, a narrow majority of the House opted to single out and endanger some of the most vulnerable youth in our schools today. This bill doesn’t create a safe learning environment for anyone – quite the opposite -- but it does inject politics into every classroom across the country, which harms education for all students. Censorship and discrimination have no place in our schools, and we call on the Senate to reject this bill.” The ACLU urged members of the House to vote against the bill and scored today’s vote.

LAWRENCE - A state district court judge today temporarily blocked enforcement of a Kansas law banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender people under 18, finding the law likely violates the Kansas state constitution. “This is an enormous relief to our clients and families across the state of Kansas,” said Harper Seldin, Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Rights Project. “The medical care unjustly banned by this law serves as the foundation of young transgender people’s entire lives and helps give them the future all young people deserve. Any decision about this medical care should be between families and their doctors, and today’s order from the court restores that fundamental principle. We will continue to challenge this law until Kansas is a safe place to raise every family.” “Our brave clients invested tremendous effort to represent not only their interests but also the interests of all transgender youth in Kansas,” said Kristen Broz, partner in the Litigation Department of Ballard Spahr. “This was a remarkable team effort from hard-working attorneys from both ACLU and Ballard who devoted their time to achieve this result that will change the lives of many.” SB 63 prohibits medical providers in the state of Kansas from providing gender-affirming medical treatments, such as hormone therapies and pubertal suppressants, to transgender youth diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The law allows these same treatments to be provided to cisgender youth for any other reason. SB 63 was passed by the Kansas state legislature in January of 2025, then vetoed by Governor Laura Kelly, who said in her veto statement, “it is not the job of politicians to stand between a parent and a child who needs medical care of any kind.” The legislature overrode her veto, and SB 63 took effect on February 20, 2025. In May 2025, Loe v. Kansas was filed by the ACLU and the ACLU of Kansas in the District Court of Douglas County, charging SB 63 with violating the Kansas Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and fundamental rights. The case was filed pseudonymously on behalf of 16-year-old Ryan Roe and his mother, Rebecca Roe as well as 13-year-old Lily Loe and her mother, Lisa Loe.