Washington - A U.S. federal appeals court handed President Donald Trump’s administration a legal victory on Friday in its efforts to seek data from providers of transgender healthcare to minors, reinstating a Justice Department subpoena that a lower court had blocked as politically motivated.

In its ruling, a divided panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a federal judge in Seattle wrongly concluded the Justice Department’s subpoena was issued in bad faith in a lawsuit brought by telehealth provider QueerDoc.