Federal Judge Orders Trump Admin to Restore Censored Medical Articles Removed for Mentioning ‘LGBTQ’ People
A federal judge in Massachusetts has ordered the Trump administration to republish peer-reviewed medical articles that were removed from a government website due to their use of terms such as “LGBTQ” and “transgender.”
The decision marks a significant legal victory for two Harvard Medical School physicians who challenged the removal on constitutional grounds.
On March 12, Drs. Gordon Schiff and Celeste Royce filed a 29-page lawsuit after their scholarly articles were taken down from the Patient Safety Network (PSNet), an online database managed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
PSNet serves as a government-run resource offering peer-reviewed research, tools, and educational content on patient safety.
The plaintiffs argued that the removal of their work violated the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act. In April, they filed a motion for a preliminary injunction seeking to compel the government to restore the original content.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin granted that request, concluding in a 28-page ruling that the removal constituted viewpoint discrimination. “The plaintiffs are likely to succeed in proving that the removal of their articles was a textbook example of viewpoint discrimination by the defendants in violation of the First Amendment,” Judge Sorokin wrote.
The articles were removed pursuant to a January 20 executive order issued by former President Donald Trump, which directed federal agencies to eliminate all language perceived to promote “gender ideology.” In compliance with this directive, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued guidance, leading AHRQ to request that authors revise their articles by removing terms deemed “problematic.”
According to the complaint, AHRQ offered to republish the articles only if the authors agreed to eliminate references to “transgender” and “LGBTQ.” The editorial team, led by Dr. Patrick Romano, emphasized that this condition was non-negotiable. In one instance, Dr. Romano proposed that Dr. Schiff remove just three words—describing high-risk groups for suicide—in order for his article to be reposted.
Dr. Schiff declined, stating that omitting those terms would compromise the article’s accuracy, integrity, and its purpose of identifying vulnerable populations at risk for suicide. He and Dr. Royce refused to publish censored versions of their work, prompting the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs contended that PSNet, as a government-created digital platform for academic and medical dialogue, qualifies as a limited public forum. Under established First Amendment jurisprudence, such forums cannot impose viewpoint-based restrictions on speech.
“The First Amendment forbids such discrimination in all fora,” their motion argued, “but the necessity for the rule is perhaps most obvious in a case like this—where the speech at issue constitutes the scientific, medical views of experts.”
Judge Sorokin sided with the plaintiffs, concluding that the government’s justification—that the restrictions were mandated by the executive order—was insufficient and failed the requirement of viewpoint neutrality.
“The commentaries were removed from PSNet because of their expressive content,” the judge wrote. “Even passing references to people who identify themselves as transgender were deemed contrary to the perspective regarding gender identity set forth in the EO. Because the plaintiffs refused to change the content of their commentaries by removing words that acknowledged the existence of people who identify themselves as transgender, the defendants did not repost them.”
The court found that the government had effectively admitted its actions amounted to unconstitutional censorship. “This is a flagrant violation of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights,” Sorokin stated. He dismissed the government’s argument that the viewpoint neutrality requirement was not absolute, noting that they cited no legal precedent to support that claim.
The judge also concluded that the removal of the articles—and the condition that they be altered for reposting—undermined patient safety, further weakening the government’s position.
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In a separate order, Judge Sorokin directed the government to restore the censored articles on PSNet within seven days.