A federal appeals court has hit pause on a ruling that would’ve shut Elon Musk’s controversial DOGE team out of a massive trove of sensitive American data—at least temporarily.
In a sharply split 2-1 decision, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to continue accessing private information housed across the Treasury and Education Departments, as well as the Office of Personnel Management, while a legal battle unfolds. A separate 8-7 vote rejected a broader review by the full court.
The lawsuit, launched by a coalition of five labor groups and six military veterans, alleges that former President Donald Trump’s administration—and now Musk, his handpicked DOGE czar—is violating federal privacy laws by granting this access. The data in question isn’t trivial: Social Security numbers, income records, home addresses, citizenship status, student debt information, even veterans’ disability benefits.
The DOGE initiative, part of Trump’s grand plan to gut federal bureaucracy, has come under fire from critics who say it’s a ticking surveillance time bomb. Some fear the data might be rerouted to private servers, dumped into AI systems, or weaponized for immigration enforcement or political retaliation.
“We fear this decision will now greenlight a massive data hack,” warned American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, who called the ruling a dangerous precedent. “Even if we win later, the damage will already be done.”
Inside the court, the ideological tug-of-war was palpable. Judge Julius Richardson, a Trump appointee, wrote for the majority, suggesting the plaintiffs’ fears were speculative and that individual harm was indistinct amid “millions upon millions of rows” of government data.
But dissenting Judge Nicole Berner, a Biden appointee, didn’t hold back. She compared the ruling to letting the genie out of the bottle: “Even if they ultimately prevail, the plaintiffs will already have suffered irreparable harm.”
Oral arguments are scheduled for May 5, with DOGE’s fate—and potentially the boundaries of federal data privacy—hanging in the balance.
The Justice Department has yet to comment. The case, meanwhile, continues to stoke alarm among digital rights advocates and civil liberties groups watching Musk’s increasingly sweeping role in federal infrastructure.
