Unions Seek to Block DOGE From Getting Treasury, Labor Data (2)

A group of unions asked for a temporary court order to stop the US Treasury Department from handing over personal and financial data on Americans to people associated with Elon Musk’s team of government efficiency enforcers.

The unions also requested that the court order Treasury and Scott Bessent, who leads the agency, to “retrieve and safeguard” any information already obtained by Musk’s group, known as DOGE, according to a court filing.

The request for a pause comes after the organizations sued Bessent and the Treasury Department on Monday, accusing them of illegally letting their members’ information be shared with the Department of Government Efficiency. President Donald Trump has asked Musk and DOGE to root out waste in government spending and modernize federal information technology.

US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly set a telephone conference on the unions’ request in Washington federal court for 3 p.m. Wednesday. The unions asked for a restraining order to stay in place until the court can rule on the merits of its case.

Meanwhile, union organizations including the AFL-CIO filed a separate suit against DOGE and the Labor Department Wednesday to stop people tied to Musk’s effort from accessing those systems. The plaintiffs accused DOGE of breaking multiple laws, including ones that protect government data collected on hundreds of millions of Americans.

Labor Suit

“DOGE seeks to gain access to sensitive systems before courts can stop them, dismantle agencies before Congress can assert its prerogatives in the federal budget, and intimidate and threaten employees who stand in their way, worrying about the consequences later,” according to the complaint filed in Washington federal court.

The White House said Monday that Musk is what’s known as a special government employee, an officer or employee in the executive branch of the federal government who typically serves for a limited period of time. He “has abided by all applicable federal laws,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Spokespeople for the Treasury and Labor Departments didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Treasury Department has brought in at least two people tied to DOGE, Bloomberg News has reported. Tom Krause, the chief executive of Cloud Software Group Inc., and Marko Elez, an engineer who has worked for Musk’s SpaceX and social-media platform X, have offices there. Both of them have agency email addresses and clearance to access some secure but unclassified Treasury information.

Read More: Treasury, Bessent Sued Over Giving Access to Musk’s DOGE

Monday’s lawsuit mentioned reports that Bessent gave the DOGE team access to the federal payment system last week following the resignation of a career official at the department. The system contains confidential information on taxpayers, employees and companies, according to the suit.

Invasion of Privacy

If the court doesn’t issue a pause, the plaintiffs in the suit said they “will continue to experience invasions to their members’ privacy that are incapable of being undone.”

The suit claims that Treasury and Bessent violated the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Internal Revenue Code by “maintaining a system that enables records and information about individuals to be accessed and disclosed to unauthorized parties.” The union groups cited the Administrative Procedure Act to justify their request, arguing that the actions by the defendants were “arbitrary and capricious” and exceeded their authority under the law.

The Treasury Department said on Tuesday that the DOGE team has been given “read-only” access to “coded data” of the government’s payments system.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Treasury include the Alliance for Retired Americans, American Federation of Government Employees and Service Employees International Union. State Democracy Defenders Fund is helping represent the plaintiffs.

The cases are Alliance for Retired Americans v. Bessent, 25-cv-00313, and AFL-CIO v. Department of Labor, 25-cv-00339, US District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

(Updates with case against Labor Department.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Sabrina Willmer in Washington at swillmer2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Elizabeth Wasserman, Peter Jeffrey

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