A federal judge has ruled that the Elon Musk-led U.S. DOGE Service can access Labor Department data on millions of Americans, marking a setback for labor unions that had sought to block the Department of Government Efficiency’s work.
Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the order on Friday night, ending a temporary block on DOGE access to Labor Department data.
Although he expressed concerns about letting DOGE get to that information, Bates ruled that the AFL-CIO and four other large labor unions that requested a restraining order failed to show that “at least one particular member is substantially likely to suffer an injury” with DOGE access.
“This data includes the medical and financial records of millions of Americans,” Bates wrote. “But on the current record, plaintiffs have failed to establish standing.”
The order is a blow to the unions, which have organized as the front line of defense aimed at protecting federal workers as DOGE seeks to trim $2 trillion from federal spending. On Friday, the unions had tried to expand their lawsuits to encompass other federal agencies that DOGE has targeted in recent days, including the Education Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The unions had filed the lawsuit on Wednesday to prevent DOGE personnel from accessing “highly sensitive data” stored by the Labor Department, including medical information about federal workers, the identities of government whistleblowers and privileged information about the economy that can influence financial markets.
In the lawsuit, the unions alleged that DOGE could gain access to confidential information about federal investigations into Tesla and Musk’s other corporate interests, including his competitors, if they are able to access the Labor Department’s systems.
“At every step, DOGE is violating multiple laws, from constitutional limits on executive power, to laws protecting civil servants from arbitrary threats and adverse action, to crucial protections for government data collected and stored on hundreds of millions of Americans,” the unions stated in the lawsuit.
The Labor Department has more than 50 different systems with “personally identifiable information,” according to the lawsuit. That also includes data on workplace health and safety violations; wage theft data, workers’ compensation and black lung claims for all federal employees; and other whistleblower complaints.
The White House derided the unions’ lawsuit.
“Slashing waste, fraud, and abuse, and becoming better stewards of the American taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars might be a crime to Democrats, but it’s not a crime in a court of law,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Those working with Musk are doing so in full compliance with federal law, appropriate security clearances and as employees of relevant agencies, not as outside advisers, Fields added.
The unions allege that DOGE’s work is being carried out without legal authority and violates federal privacy law, including the Privacy Act of 1974, which was designed to protect individual Americans against breaches of their personal privacy by mandating that the federal government use data only for legal and necessary reasons.
After the unions initially filed their lawsuit, the Labor Department reached a temporary agreement with them to block DOGE access to data until Friday’s hearing.
Even as he rejected the unions’ request, Bates expressed deep concerns about DOGE accessing Labor records.
“You have a great deal of confidence in a couple of people who, according to public reports, are very young, who have never been in the federal government, never had any training with respect to the handling of confidential information,” Bates said. “You’re asking me to just put absolute confidence in the fact that nothing inappropriate will happen.”
DOGE staffers met with Labor officials on Wednesday, after a protest drew hundreds. The protesters, who included union officials and Democratic lawmakers, waved signs that said “Hands off workers data” and chanted “Elon Musk has got to go.”
“I’m here to protest Elon Musk getting personal sensitive information, which can include people’s financial information, their medical information, disability, all kinds of very sensitive information … like the jobs numbers before they’re made public,” said Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Virginia), who serves as the ranking Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee. “You can’t rule out the possibility that they will use the information for profit.”
Erica Groshen, a commissioner of the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics during the Obama administration, said there’s danger in granting DOGE access to BLS data, which tracks many economic indicators and often moves financial markets.
“First of all, it would be illegal,” Groshen said, citing a federal law that protects the confidentiality of statistics collected by federal agencies. “Then there is this whole trust issue. … People use these statistics to guide their most important life decisions.”
The DOGE team has already accessed highly restricted data maintained by the Office of Personnel Management, including personally identifiable information for millions of federal employees, including Treasury and State Department officials in sensitive security positions.
On Thursday in a separate lawsuit, another federal judge temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing a Treasury Department system responsible for processing trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments. That order said that a Musk ally who has been appointed to a senior position in the department should only have “read-only” access to data.