A federal judge on Saturday temporarily blocked political appointees and special government employees, including those who work for the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing sensitive and confidential information stored within the Treasury Department.
The decision comes after 19 state attorneys general sued the federal government on Friday, alleging that tech mogul Elon Musk and his DOGE staffers had no authority to access Treasury Department data that includes Americans’ Social Security numbers and other confidential financial information.
U.S. District Judge Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued the temporary restraining order, which blocks the government from “granting access to all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees.”
Engelmayer’s order also requires anyone in those groups who may have had previous access to this sensitive data since Trump took office “to immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.”
A hearing has been set for Feb. 14 for arguments on the attorneys general’s request for a preliminary injunction in the case.
The White House deemed the decision "judicial overreach" and called the judge an "activist."
"These frivolous lawsuits are akin to children throwing pasta at the wall to see if it will stick. Grandstanding government efficiency speaks volumes about those who’d rather delay much-needed change with legal shenanigans than work with the Trump Administration of ridding the government of waste, fraud, and abuse," White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said in a statement sent to NBC News.
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story.
In a similar case in Washington earlier this week, a group of union members and retirees also sued the government, alleging that the ability of DOGE staffers to access this Treasury Department data violated federal privacy laws.
The Trump administration on Wednesday agreed to block all but two DOGE staffers — Tom Krause and Marko Elez — from accessing the data and said that Krause and Elez would only access sensitive data “as needed ... provided that such access to payment records will be ‘read only.’”
Elez was caught in a separate controversy on Friday, when he resigned from DOGE after The Wall Street Journal linked him to a now-defunct social media account that espoused racist and eugenicist views.
After Vice President JD Vance defended Elez online, writing in a post on X that “I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Musk promised to reinstate him in his role at DOGE.
