A federal decide quickly blocked Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing Treasury Division data containing private data like Social Safety numbers early this morning, experiences Inside Metropolis Press.
The order is in response to a lawsuit filed yesterday in New York’s Southern District Courtroom. The swimsuit alleges that the administration exceeded its authority, broke the US Administrative Procedures Act, and violated the US Structure’s separation of powers doctrine when it granted DOGE entry to the Treasury’s federal funds system.
District Decide Paul A. Engelmeyer’s order now prohibits the Trump administration ”from granting entry to all political appointees, particular authorities workers, and authorities workers detailed from an company exterior the Treasury Division, to any Treasury Division cost file, cost techniques, or another information techniques maintained by the Treasury Division containing personally identifiable data and/or confidential monetary data of payees.”
Engelmeyer additionally orders that these prohibited from accessing the data should “instantly destroy any and all copies of fabric downloaded from the Treasury Division’s data and techniques” since January twentieth, 2025. A listening to is scheduled for February 14th.
In a press launch saying the lawsuit Friday, New York Lawyer Normal Letitia James, who filed the lawsuit, defined:
President Trump doesn’t have the ability to provide away People’ non-public data to anybody he chooses, and he can not reduce federal funds permitted by Congress. Musk and DOGE haven’t any authority to entry People’ non-public data and a few of our nation’s most delicate information.
Attorneys Normal from these different states joined James within the lawsuit: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
The lawsuit is one in every of a number of levied in opposition to Trump’s administration since he took workplace, together with a separate one over DOGE’s entry to Treasury data filed on February third. Responding to different authorized motion, federal judges have additionally blocked Trump’s govt order concentrating on birthright citizenship, with one calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”