US judge blocks Musk team from accessing social security personal information
Unions and retirees had asked for an emergency order limiting access to the agency and its vast troves of personal data.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) from Social Security Administration systems that hold personal data on millions of Americans.
The decision from US District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland also requires the team to delete any personally identifiable data they may have.
It comes after unions and retirees asked for an emergency order limiting Doge access to the agency and its vast troves of personal data.
They said the department’s “nearly unlimited” access violates privacy laws and presents massive information security risks.
A recently departed Social Security official who saw the Doge team sweep into the agency said she is deeply worried about sensitive information being exposed.
The Trump administration says Doge has a 10-person team of federal employees at the Social Security Administration, seven of whom have been granted read-only access to agency systems or personally identifiable information.
The administration has said Doge is targeting waste and fraud in the federal government.
Judge Hollander found that the ends may not justify the means.
“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 wrote.
Lawyers for the government argued the Doge access does not deviate significantly from normal practices inside the agency, where employees are routinely allowed to search its databases, but lawyers for the plaintiffs called the access unprecedented.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, called the ruling a “major win for working people and retirees across the country”.
Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, said the court “recognised the real and immediate dangers of Doge’s reckless actions and took action to stop it”.
Doge has gained at least some access to other government databases, including at the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service.
At SSA, Doge staff swept into the agency days after Donald Trump’s inauguration and pressed for a software engineer to quickly get access to data systems that are normally carefully restricted even within the government, a former official said in court documents.
The team appeared to be searching for fraud based on inaccuracies and misunderstandings, according to Tiffany Flick, the former acting chief of staff to the acting commissioner.
Judge Hollander, who is based in Baltimore and was nominated by Barack Obama, is the latest judge to consider a Doge-related case. The team has drawn nearly two dozen lawsuits, some of which have shed light on staffing and operations that have largely been kept under wraps.
Several judges have raised questions about Doge’s sweeping cost-cutting efforts, but they have not always agreed that the risks are imminent enough to block the team from government systems.
