https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/trump-administration-must-republish-harvard-doctors-studies
May 23, 2025, 3:13 PM EDT; Updated: May 23, 2025, 3:35 PM EDT
Allie ReedCorrespondent
A large transgender flag with signatures and messages during a protest.Photographer: Manaure Quintero/BloombergThe Trump administration must republish two Harvard Medical School professors’ papers it censored because they contained words related to gender ideology, a federal judge ruled Friday.
“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 Leo Sorokin wrote for the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
The US Department of Health and Human Services took down peer-reviewed articles by doctors Gordon Schiff and Celeste Royce from the now-inactive Patient Safety Network website, run by the HHS’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
PSNet said the articles were taken down in accordance with President Donald Trump’s executive order directing agencies to remove content that promotes “gender ideology.” Schiff’s article, on suicide risk assessment, and Royce’s, on endometriosis, both referenced transgender people.
“This is a flagrant violation of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights as private speakers on a limited public forum,” Sorokin wrote.
The government can only restrict speech on a limited public forum like PSNet in a way that is reasonable and viewpoint neutral, the order said, and the administration’s restrictions were not.
Sorokin said it is not within his discretion “to evaluate the wisdom of restricting access to peer-reviewed scientific information that enhances patient safety by fostering more informed and timely diagnostic care—or of eliminating entirely a free, online repository of patient-safety resources accessed each year by thousands of medical professionals seeking to provide better, safer care to their patients in the United States. Those are matters for the political branches of government to decide.”
The preliminary injunction applies to Schiff and Royce’s articles, as well as other content removed from PSNet in a similar manner.
The case is Schiff v. U.S. Office of Personnel Mgmt., D. Mass., No. 1:25-cv-10595, preliminary injunction order 5/23/25.
(Updates throughout.)
To contact the reporter on this story: Allie Reed in Boston at areed@bloombergindustry.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alex Clearfield at aclearfield@bloombergindustry.com
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