(File Photo: Source for Photo: This Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2021, photo shows a Social Security card in Tigard, Ore. Social Security checks to increase by 5.9%, as inflation fuels largest COLA for retirees in nearly 40 years (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from Social Security systems that hold personal data on millions of Americans, calling their work there a “fishing expedition.”
The order also requires the team to delete any personally identifiable data in their possession.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland found that the team got broad access to sensitive information at the Social Security Administration to search for fraud with little justification.
“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.
The order does allow DOGE staffers to access to data that’s been redacted or stripped of anything personally identifiable, if they undergo training and background checks.
“To be sure, rooting out possible fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the SSA is in the public interest. But, that does not mean that the government can flout the law to do so,” Hollander wrote.
The Trump administration says DOGE is targeting waste in the federal government. Musk has been focused on Social Security as an alleged hotbed of fraud, describing it as a “ponzi scheme” and insisting that reducing waste in the program is an important way to cut government spending.
The ruling, which could be challenged on appeal, comes in a lawsuit filed by labor unions, retirees and the advocacy group Democracy Forward. They argued that DOGE access violates privacy laws and presents serious information security risks. The lawsuit included a declaration from 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 White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
DOGE detailed a 10-person team of federal employees at the SSA, seven of whom were granted read-only access to agency systems or personally identifiable information, according to court documents.
The staffers were all federal employees allowed to access the data under federal privacy laws, the government argued, and there’s no evidence that any personal data was improperly shared.
The Justice Department also said that DOGE access doesn’t deviate significantly from normal practices inside the agency, where employees are routinely allowed to search its databases. But attorneys 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 that “the court recognized the real and immediate dangers of DOGE’s reckless actions and took action to stop it.”
DOGE has gotten at least some access to other government databases, including at the Treasury Department and IRS.
At SSA, DOGE staffers swept into the agency days after 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.
Hollander, 75, who is based in Baltimore and was nominated by President Barack Obama, is the latest judge to consider a DOGE related case.
The team has drawn nearly two dozen lawsuits. Earlier this week another Maryland judge found that DOGE’s dismantling of United States Agency for International Development was likely unconstitutional.
While other judges have raised questions about DOGE’s sweeping cost-cutting efforts, they have not always agreed any risks are imminent enough to block the team from government systems.
