Democratic AGs win preliminary injunction against DOGE access to Treasury payment systems

Feb. 21, 2025

ByStates Newsroom staff D.C. Bureau

WASHINGTON D.C. — In a suit brought by 19 Democratic attorneys general, a federal judge in New York on Friday night in a preliminary injunction blocked the U.S. DOGE Service from accessing the Department of Treasury’s payment systems.

“We just won a court order stopping DOGE and unauthorized, unelected, and unvetted individuals like Elon Musk from accessing people’s private data and blocking federal funds,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the suit, posted on X. “We will keep fighting to protect all Americans from this administration’s destruction.”

U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas had earlier extended a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Department of Treasury from granting access to political appointees, special government employees and anyone else except civil servants who have passed necessary background checks, obtained security clearances and are trained in physical and statutory security of the system.

“The public interest is plainly served by requiring the Treasury Department to ensure, to the maximum extent possible, the security of these systems and the information contained therein,” Vargas wrote Friday.

She said under her new “narrowly tailored” order, “the United States Department of the Treasury and the Secretary of the Treasury are restrained from granting access to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees to any employee, officer or contractor employed or affiliated with the United States DOGE Service, DOGE, or the DOGE Team established at the Treasury Department, pending further Order of this Court.”

She also ordered Treasury officials to provide the court with a report by March 24 on DOGE staff members’ training, vetting and security clearances and more, and said she would then review the preliminary injunction.

The Democratic state attorneys general sued President Donald Trump, the Department of Treasury and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Feb. 8 for opening the department’s payment infrastructure to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency personnel. They included a tech company CEO and a 25-year-old software engineer who worked for Musk, a billionaire Trump campaign donor who is characterized by the White House as a senior adviser.

The attorneys general had said in a statement earlier this month they wanted a preliminary injunction to continue a prohibition on access to the Treasury Department’s payment system.

Vargas was nominated by former President Joe Biden in March 2024 and confirmed by the Senate in September.

Attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin joined the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The DOGE personnel gained access to the systems less than two weeks into Trump’s second term, according to numerous reports and court records.

Those who were able to see into the system included Cloud Software Group, Inc. CEO Tom Krause and Elez Marko, a software engineer who worked at SpaceX and X and who reportedly had administrative access to alter it. Krause claimed in a recent court filing that he only ever had “over the shoulder” access to read the system.