Federal Judge Bars Elon Musk and DOGE from Accessing Social Security Files: ‘Engaged in a Fishing Expedition’
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Thursday blocking Elon Musk and the DOGE team from accessing systems at the Social Security Administration (SSA), characterizing their activities as a “fishing expedition” that risked compromising private personal data for millions of Americans.
The order arose out of a lawsuit filed by a group of labor unions and advocacy organizations that named as defendants the SSA, Musk as the “Senior Advisor to the President and the de facto Head of DOGE,” and Amy Gleason as the Acting Administrator of DOGE. Gleason’s role as the supposed head of DOGE has been a key part of the multiple lawsuits so far regarding DOGE’s efforts, with her appointment being secretive at first and how much control she actually has with Musk having such a visible role.
Judge Ellen Hollander with the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, an Obama appointee, issued the temporary restraining order along with a 137-page memorandum of law discussing the legal issues, explaining that DOGE’s activities constituted a “fishing expedition” into Americans’ personal and private data, likely violated federal privacy laws, and DOGE had failed to justify such invasive and sweeping access:
The American public may well applaud and support the Trump Administration’s mission to root out fraud, waste, and bloat from federal agencies, including SSA, to the extent it exists. But, by what means and methods?
The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack.
To facilitate the expedition, SSA provided members of the SSA DOGE Team with unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans, including but not limited to Social Security numbers, medical records, mental health records, hospitalization records, drivers’ license numbers, bank and credit card information, tax information, income history, work history, birth and marriage certificates, and home and work addresses.
Yet, defendants, with so called experts on the DOGE Team, never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team 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. Indeed, the government has not even 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. Its method of doing so is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.
The judge’s order imposed an immediate stop to the DOGE team accessing any “personally identifiable information” of Social Security recipients within the SSA systems, as well as ordering Musk, Gleason, and DOGE to “disgorge and delete all non-anonymized [personally identifiable information] data in their possession or under their control” that they had obtained or accessed from any SSA system.
DOGE was further barred under Hollander’s order from installing new software in SSA systems, ordered to remove any software that had been installed by DOGE or installed on its behalf, and prohibited from “accessing, altering, or disclosing any SSA computer or software code.” DOGE could continue to access redacted or anonymized data in the SSA systems, but only after all individuals who would access that information had undergone a background investigation as was typically done for SSA employees accessing sensitive data, had completed required training on federal privacy laws and regulations, and signed the SSA agreements acknowledging the agency’s privacy policies and agreeing to comply with them.
In order to regain access to personal data again, the order continued, DOGE would need to certify all individuals accessing the data had complied with the background checks, training, and policy acknowledgement agreement requirements, and also provide a “detailed explanation” in writing of why access to this sensitive data was necessary. “The general and conclusory explanation that the information is needed to search for fraud or waste is not sufficient to establish need,” wrote Hollander.
The judge further required DOGE to file a Status Report with the court documenting the steps taken to comply with the order by 1:00 pm ET on March 24, 2025, and further Status Reports as needed. The temporary restraining order was set with an expiration date of fourteen days, with plaintiffs able to file a motion for extension and instructions given for limited discovery and a hearing for a preliminary injunction motion, if needed.
