A federal judge in Maryland granted a temporary restraining order on Monday blocking the Education Department and the Office of Personnel Management from disclosing sensitive data to members of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency team and anyone assisting them.
The order, issued by Judge Deborah L. Boardman in Federal District Court for the District of Maryland, prevents Mr. Musk’s representatives from carrying out what they have described as an audit of the Education Department’s student loan systems for two weeks while the lawsuit continues.
Judge Boardman wrote that the government had not argued convincingly that members of Mr. Musk’s team had a real need for access to such personal information in the performance of their duties.
“DOGE affiliates have been granted access to systems of record that contain some of the plaintiffs’ most sensitive data — Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, income and assets, citizenship status, and disability status — and their access to this trove of personal information is ongoing,” Judge Boardman wrote. “There is no reason to believe their access to this information will end anytime soon because the government believes their access is appropriate.”
The American Federation of Teachers, a union representing more than 1.8 million educators, had sued to keep members of the Musk team out of the department’s data systems, which it said contained private information that its members had submitted in connection with student aid for themselves or their families.
“We brought this case to uphold people’s privacy, because when people give their financial and other personal information to the federal government — namely to secure financial aid for their kids to go to college, or to get a student loan — they expect that data to be protected and used for the reasons it was intended, not appropriated for other means,” Randi Weingarten, the group’s president, said in a statement.
Last week, a judge in a related case refused to issue a restraining order restricting Mr. Musk’s team, finding that the group that brought the lawsuit had not shown that a group of students who had lodged similar complaints had suffered clear harm by having their data analyzed by affiliates of Mr. Musk.
But Judge Boardman found that the disclosure of sensitive personal information to Mr. Musk’s team alone was itself a concrete injury, notwithstanding any hypothetical concerns like the possibility of identity theft.
Lawyers who brought the suit had asked that the same restraints be placed on the Treasury Department, but Judge Boardman declined, as a judge in a separate case had already blocked Mr. Musk’s team from sensitive data there.
She indicated that she believed the teacher’s union would prevail in its lawsuit, and that the restraining order was necessary until the members of Mr. Musk’s team who are detailed to the Education Department could explain why they could not do their analysis with data that left out or redacted sensitive information.
