California Student Group Seeks to Stop DOGE Access to Files (1)

The University of California Student Association sued the US Department of Education in federal court, seeking to stop the disclosure of sensitive personal and financial information to the Department of Government Efficiency.

The complaint filed Friday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia says that turning the information over to DOGE employees violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the Privacy Act, the Department of Education’s Privacy Act regulations, and the Internal Revenue Code.

Unidentified DOGE staffers have gained access to the information without prior consent and “are feeding sensitive data from ED’s systems into artificial intelligence systems maintained by third parties and subject to significant security risks,” the complaint says.

The lawsuit is the latest to challenge data access to Elon Musk‘s government efficiency group. And it comes one day after a federal judge temporarily limited access to the US Treasury Department’s payment system following a group of unions’ claims that the agency illegally shared their members’ info with DOGE.

More than 42 million people in the US have federal student loans, the complaint says. For each borrower, the Department of Education collects nonpublic, personal, and financial information, including their name and Social Security number, it says. The information is stored on the National Student Loan Data Base and other federal records systems, it says.

The disclosure of the information to DOGE and its affiliates is without assurances that the applicants will receive the protection that federal law affords, the complaint says. And because the defendants’ actions and decisions are shrouded in secrecy, “individuals do not have even basic information about what personal or financial information Defendants are sharing with outside parties or how their information is being used,” it says.

Handing over the financial information to DOGE is unlawful under the the Privacy Act and the Department of Education’s Privacy Act regulations, which prohibits a federal agency’s disclosure of a person’s records without their consent. The disclosure violates the IRC that prohibits the disclosure of tax return information except in limited circumstances that are inapplicable here, it said.

The defendants didn’t use reasoned decisionmaking prior to making the disclosures and their actions are therfore arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA, the complaint says. The disclosures also violate the defendant’s duty under the APA to protect individual records from unauthorized disclosures, it says.

The student association seeks a declaration that turning over the information to DOGE or its associated individuals is unlawful, an in injunction against any further disclosures, and return of the records already transferred from the Department of Education’s systems.

The Department of Justice declined to comment.

Public Citizen Litigation Group and the National Student Legal Defense Network represent the plaintiff.

The case is Univ. of Calif. Student Ass’n. v. Carter, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00354, complaint filed 2/7/25.