Judge Green-Lights Labor Unions’ Lawsuit Over DOGE Access to Labor Department Systems

The lawsuit seeks to prevent DOGE from accessing the systems, which contain financial and medical data on millions of Americans.

A federal judge on April 16 declined to dismiss a lawsuit from labor unions seeking to block the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing data systems at the Labor Department.

Headed by tech billionaire and presidential adviser Elon Musk, DOGE was created by President Donald Trump via executive order with the goal of identifying and rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government to reduce government spending and debt.

In a 46-page ruling, Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia said that some of the claims made by a group of labor unions who sued the department could move forward, including the claim that DOGE lacks the legal authority to access the systems and that it violates the Federal Privacy Act by doing so.

Bates also dismissed some of the other claims made by the unions, including that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) violated health care privacy laws by allowing DOGE access to its systems.

The ruling comes after the AFL-CIO and a coalition of unions representing workers across the federal government and public sector sued the Labor Department, HHS, DOGE, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in February.

The lawsuit seeks to prevent DOGE from accessing Labor Department systems, which contain financial and medical data on millions of Americans.

It argued that DOGE is violating multiple laws in accessing the data, including the Administrative Procedure Act and the Federal Privacy Act, which prohibit an agency from disclosing records about a person to another agency unless the person has first given written permission.

“Absent this Court’s intervention, DOGE will have access to highly sensitive data, including, among many others, medical and benefits information about all federal workers with worker compensation or Black Lung claims, the identities of vulnerable workers who have sought the Department’s protection via wage and hour or occupational safety complaints, and investigative and litigation records of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data crucial to an accurate understanding of the state of our economy,” the lawsuit stated.

The suit further argued that DOGE would have access to records concerning investigations of Musk’s businesses, such as Tesla and SpaceX, as well as records containing the sensitive trade secrets of his business competitors.

“No other business owner on the planet has access to this kind of information on his competitors, and for good reason,” the lawsuit stated.

Musk said in February that he would recuse himself from matters if a conflict of interest arose.

In his ruling, Bates wrote that Congress enacted the Privacy Act to protect individuals identified in federally maintained systems so they could trust that their information would be accessed only by those with a valid need to see it.

“As a result, an intrusion upon that sphere—even if the sphere literally encompasses only one row of millions in a dataset—amounts to an injury similar to the intrusion upon other private spheres, such as one’s home,” Bates wrote.

The judge acknowledged that the case is likely to undergo a lot of “twists and turns” before it is resolved.

“This is a dynamic case undergirded by a set of facts evolving before the Court’s eyes,” he wrote. “But no matter how the record unfolds, the complaint remains static.”

Democracy Forward, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of the labor organizations, welcomed the ruling.

“We are pleased that the labor and economic organizations who are standing up for the rights of people and the rule of law will get to have their day in court as this case proceeds,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said.

The Epoch Times has contacted DOGE and the White House for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.