A sign in front of the entrance of the Security Administration’s main campus on March 19, 2025 in Woodlawn, Maryland.
Kayla Bartkowski | Getty Images
A federal judge Thursday issued a temporary restraining order barring Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency team from having access to personally identifiable information from the Social Security Administration.
Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander in a scathing ruling accused DOGE of launching a “fishing expedition” at the Social Security agency and failing to provide any reason why it needed to access vast swaths of Americans’ personal and private data.
Hollander said the “defendants, with so called experts on the DOGE Team” never identify or articulate a reason why DOGE needs “unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government.”
The order in U.S. District Court in Baltimore blocks the Social Security Administration, acting Commissioner Leland Dudek and Chief Information Officer Michael Russo, as well as all related agents and employees working with them, from granting access to any system containing personally identifiable information.
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Per the lawsuit, personally identifiable information is defined as information that can be used to identify an individual, either on its own or when combined with other information. That includes Social Security numbers, medical provider information, medical and mental health treatment records, employer and employee payment records, employee earnings, addresses, bank records and tax information.
The judge also ordered the DOGE team members and affiliates to delete all non-anonymized personally identifiable information in their possession or control that they have accessed “directly or indirectly” since Jan. 20.
The lawsuit was brought by a coalition of unions and retirees including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the Alliance for Retired Americans and the American Federation of Teachers.
In a statement, White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields slammed Hollander as a “radical leftist” and accused her of “abusing the system to try and sabotage” Trump’s agenda.
“The President will continue to seek all legal remedies available to ensure the will of the American people goes into effect,” Fields said.
“We will work to comply with the court order,” a Social Security spokesperson told CNBC via email.
Judge: DOGE method ‘hitting a fly with a sledgehammer’
Hollander, noting the affiliates of DOGE have kept their identities hidden, wrote, “ironically, the identity of these DOGE affiliates has been concealed because defendants are concerned that the disclosure of even their names would expose them to harassment and thus invade their privacy.”
“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,” the judge wrote.
The judge also said that the administration has not “attempted to explain why a more tailored, measured, titrated approach is not suitable to the task.”
“Instead, the government simply repeats its incantation of a need to modernize the system and uncover fraud,” Hollander wrote. “Its method of doing so is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.”
The judge pointed to the public reaction to the disclosure of the Social Security numbers of more than 400 former congressional staffers and other individuals with the release of unredacted files associated with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That supports the expectation of privacy with regard to that personal data, she wrote.
The plaintiffs are “likely” to succeed in their arguments that DOGE’s actions are arbitrary and violate the Privacy Act and Administrative Procedure Act, the judge said.
“We are grateful that the court took strong action to protect every American’s personal data,” Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, a national grassroots advocacy organization, said in an emailed statement. “Seniors must be able to trust the Social Security Administration will protect their personal information and keep it from falling into the wrong hands.”
— CNBC’s Dan Mangan and Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report.