Washington — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing systems at the Social Security Administration containing the sensitive information of millions of Americans, delivering another setback to President Trump’s efforts to overhaul the federal government.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander wrote in a 137-page decision that a group of unions challenging DOGE’s access to systems of records at the SSA was likely to succeed on its claims that the efforts violated the Privacy Act and a federal law that governs the agency rulemaking process.
She granted a request for a temporary restraining order that was sought by the labor unions, which filed a lawsuit in February that challenged the legality of the SSA’s decision to allow DOGE to get its hands on sensitive, personal and confidential information pertaining to millions of Americans.
“The defense does not appear to share a privacy concern for the millions of Americans whose SSA records were made available to the DOGE affiliates, without their consent, and which contain sensitive, confidential, and personally identifiable information,” wrote Hollander, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.
The judge’s order blocks officials at the SSA from granting DOGE access to systems containing Americans’ personal information. It also requires Elon Musk, DOGE and its team members at the agency to delete all non-anonymized personal information that they obtained from the SSA, and prevents them from accessing any agency computer or software code.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, cheered the decision as a win for American workers and retirees across the country.
“The court saw that Elon Musk and his unqualified lackeys present a grave danger to Social Security and have illegally accessed the data of millions of Americans,” Saunders said in a statement. “This decision will not only force them to delete any data they have currently saved, but it will also block them from further sharing, accessing or disclosing our Social Security information.”
The Justice Department has said that 10 members of the DOGE team are working at the SSA, and seven of them have had access to personal information housed in its data systems.
In her opinion, Hollander said that the Trump administration failed to provide the court with a reasonable explanation for why the DOGE team needs access to the data maintained in the SSA’s systems to root out fraud and abuse.
“Defendants disregarded protocols for proper hiring, onboarding, training, and access limitations, and, in a rushed fashion, provided access to a massive amount of sensitive, confidential data to members of the DOGE Team, without any articulated explanation for the need to do so,” she wrote.
The judge, who sits on the district court in Baltimore, knocked the Justice Department for withholding the names of the DOGE team members in an effort to protect their privacy, but allowing access to millions of Americans’ personal information.
The Trump administration, she said, “have not shown the same level of care with the far more sensitive, confidential data of millions of Americans who entrusted their government with their personal and private information. The trust appears to have been violated, without any articulated need.”
“The American public may well applaud and support the Trump administration’s mission to root out fraud, waste, and bloat from federal agencies, including SSA, to the extent it exists. But, by what means and methods?” Hollander said. “The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion.”
She accused the Trump administration of giving DOGE “unbridled access” to millions of Americans’ private data, including their Social Security numbers, medical records, drivers’ license numbers, bank and credit card information, tax information, income and work history and their home and work addresses.
“This intrusion into the personal affairs of millions of Americans — absent an adequate explanation for the need to do so — is not in the public interest,” she said. “To be sure, rooting out possible fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the SSA is in the public interest. But, that does not mean that the government can flout the law to do so. The president’s advisors and employees are not exempt from the statutes Congress enacted to protect American citizens from overbroad and unnecessary access to their [personal information].”
Mr. Trump established DOGE on his first day back in the White House and has said that he tasked Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, with heading the initiative. The White House has said, though, that Amy Gleason, who worked at DOGE’s predecessor entity, is formally the administrator of DOGE. The task force’s employees have been dispatched to more than a dozen federal agencies as part of the president’s plan to shrink the size of the government.
But DOGE’s actions, and specifically access to sensitive government databases, has raised concerns about whether they are complying with a federal law that aims to protect Americans’ private information. Lawsuits have been brought seeking to restrict DOGE’s access at least five other agencies, as well as claiming that Musk’s actions are unconstitutional.
Just earlier this week, another federal judge in Maryland found that Musk and DOGE likely violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and the separation of powers when they unilaterally acted to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development.
