Nashville: Vanderbilt University Medical Center is going through a federal civil rights investigation after turning the medical data of transgender sufferers over to Tennessee‘s legal professional normal, hospital officers have confirmed.

The US Department of Health and Human Services’ investigation comes simply weeks after two sufferers sued VUMC for releasing their data to Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti late final 12 months.

“We have been contacted by and are working with the Office of Civil Rights,” spokesperson John Howser mentioned in a press release late Thursday. “We have no further comment since this is an ongoing investigation.”

VUMC has come beneath fireplace for ready months earlier than telling sufferers in June that their medical data was shared late final 12 months, performing solely after the existence of the requests emerged as proof in one other courtroom case. The information sparked alarm for a lot of households dwelling within the ruby crimson state the place GOP lawmakers have sought to ban gender-affirming look after transgender youth and restrict LGBTQ rights.

The sufferers suing over the discharge of their data say VUMC ought to have eliminated personally figuring out data earlier than turning over the data as a result of the hospital was conscious of Tennessee authorities’ hostile perspective towards the rights of transgender individuals.

Many of the sufferers who had their non-public medical data shared with Skrmetti’s workplace are state employees, or their grownup youngsters or spouses; others are on TennCare, the state’s Medicaid plan; and a few weren’t even sufferers at VUMC’s clinic that gives transgender care.

“The more we learn about the breadth of the deeply personal information that VUMC disclosed, the more horrified we are,” mentioned legal professional Tricia Herzfeld, who’s representing the sufferers. “Our clients are encouraged that the federal government is looking into what happened here.”

HHS didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark relating to the civil rights investigation.

Meanwhile, Skrmetti has maintained he solely requested the VUMC affected person data as a result of he is concerned in a “run of the mill” investigation over attainable medical billing fraud and that he’s not focusing on sufferers or their households.

Yet Skrmetti has continued to draw skepticism from Democratic lawmakers and civil rights advocates after he joined a bunch of Republican attorneys normal in opposing a proposed federal rule that will restrict how legislation enforcement and state officers gather the medical data of those that flee their residence state to obtain abortion providers or transgender health care.

Skrmetti can be defending the state’s gender-affirming care ban for transgender youth and has repeatedly praised a federal appeals courtroom choice to permit the legislation to quickly go into impact.

Skrmetti’s workplace says they’d “not heard anything” concerning the civil rights investigation.

“Turning a disagreement about the law into a federal investigation would be plainly retaliatory and would reflect a dangerous politicisation of federal law enforcement,” mentioned spokesperson Amy Wilhite.

An earlier model of this report had an incorrect first identify for Vanderbilt University Medical Center spokesperson John Howser.