Judge orders ban on DOGE from accessing sensitive Treasury data

A federal judge on Friday issued an order prohibiting Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service from gaining access to the Treasury Department’s systems and databases that contain sensitive financial information on Americans, leaving in place a temporary block that has been in effect since Feb. 8.

U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas said in her ruling that there’s a public interest in protecting the security of personal information and banking information housed at the agency’s Bureau of Fiscal Services, where systems are generally only used by a small number of civil servants whose jobs require it. She gave the Trump administration a chance to alleviate her concerns by providing evidence of efforts to safeguard that data.

In the meantime, DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency but is a section of White House operations, is prevented from getting into payment systems and other sensitive parts of the agency’s operations.

“Defendants’ interest in the modernization and increased efficiency in Treasury payment systems is not undercut by the relief the Court is Ordering,” Vargas wrote. “Indeed, taking the time to adequately mitigate potential security concerns and properly onboard members to engage in this work outweighs the Defendants’ immediate need to access and redevelop Treasury systems.”

Vargas gave the government until March 24 to offer a road map for possibly lifting the order. The judge asked for details on what training DOGE members at Treasury have or will have on handling sensitive data, information on what security clearances they have or will receive as well as a rundown of the chain of command for DOGE employees assigned to the agency.

A coalition of 19 state attorneys general sued the Trump administration over DOGE’s activities at Treasury.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the lawsuit on behalf of the states, said Musk’s actions have put the country at risk. “Giving the world’s richest man unauthorized access to our nation’s central payment system, and our most sensitive personal information, puts all Americans – and the essential funds they depend on – at risk,” James said in a statement after the order was issued.

The states obtained a temporary restraining order early on Feb. 8 from a different judge, who blocked DOGE representatives from dealing with Treasury data and ordered them to “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any.”

Lawyers for the government have said that there are no known copies of any materials DOGE accessed before the order.

An attorney for the New York attorney general’s office, which handled the case, argued in court at a Feb. 14 hearing that unqualified members of Musk’s group had access to information that only a select group of career Treasury employees were previously able to handle, a system that was dictated by privacy laws.

Andrew Amer, a lawyer speaking for the coalition of states, said that the access granted to DOGE representatives put their residents at much greater risk of cybersecurity attacks and privacy violations.

“[It] exposed the states’ confidential bank information as well as the [personal identifying information] of the states’ residents,” Amer said.

Jeffrey Oestericher, who heads the civil division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and represents the Trump administration, argued that there were safeguards in place to protect the personal data. The government, however, recently conceded that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old DOGE software engineer, was mistakenly granted read and write access to a Treasury payment system. However, that access was revoked, federal officials have said.

DOGE has faced several lawsuits over its access to sensitive and classified records at various government agencies as well as over Musk’s unprecedented influence in the government as a temporary employee of the White House who has not been confirmed or vetted by Congress.

In another DOGE lawsuit in Virginia, a federal judge on Friday denied a request to temporarily block Musk’s team from private Treasury systems because the plaintiff didn’t provide concrete evidence that the data at issue was being misused or that there were efforts by DOGE to do so. The New York judge’s order is not affected by the case in Virginia. The variations in the rulings could come into play during future litigation and appeals.