A federal judge issued a two-week temporary restraining order (TRO) on Thursday that prevents Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing personally identifiable information from the Social Security Administration.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander of Maryland also ordered DOGE to delete any personally identifiable information it may have. The decision came after unions and retirees sought an emergency injunction that would restrict DOGE’s access to the agency and its vast personal data, the AP reports.
“The DOGE team is essentially conducting a fishing expedition in SSA, looking for a fraud epidemic based solely on suspicion,” wrote Hollander, an Obama appointee.
The order still allows DOGE access to “redacted or anonymized data and records from the SSA.”
The Trump administration says DOGE has a team of 10 federal employees investigating the Social Security Administration, seven of whom have been given read-only access to agency systems or personally identifiable information. The government has argued that DOGE’s access is not significantly different from the agency’s normal practices, which allow employees to search databases.
Established by executive order on January 20, 2025, DOGE aims to reduce federal spending, reduce the federal workforce, and modernize government technology.
In mid-February, acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Michelle King resigned after a disagreement with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over access to sensitive government documents.
Today’s decision follows a court blocking DOGE — as their access to documents across the federal government has sparked disputes with senior officials at various agencies. Perhaps most notably, the highest-ranking civil servant at the U.S. Treasury Department resigned after refusing to grant Musk’s team access to the Office of the Budget Service, which manages over $5 trillion in annual payments.
On February 8, 2025, New York Judge Paul A. Engelmayer blocked DOGE from Treasury records after 19 states, led by NY AG Letitia James, sued over cybersecurity threats. Subsequent rulings, such as Judge Deborah Boardman’s February 24 TRO on education and OPM data, strengthened the limits of DOGE’s reach. These cases demonstrated that DOGE’s need-to-know basis for personally identifiable information was unproven.
On the same day King left, Musk revealed what he said could be “the biggest scam in US history,” in which millions of “people” over 100 are collecting payments.
King, who worked for the agency for over 30 years, resigned from his position this weekend after refusing to give DOGE employees access to sensitive information, such as fraudulent payments made to vampires, with at least one recipient older than the US itself.
To that end, DOGE removed the names of 3.2 million people from the Social Security database, many of whom were listed as 120 years old or older. The agency has now declared them dead.
“Over the past two weeks, @SocialSecurity has been conducting a major cleanup of its records. Approximately 3.2 million number owners, all listed as aged 120+, have now been marked as deceased. More work to do,” the agency posted to X.
Musk shared the post, responding, “Cleaning the database of dead people.”
The Supreme Court must intervene
In response to the number of Democratic judges blocking almost every Trump import move, investor Joe Lonsdale hopes that “the Supreme Court will step in and make some sensible decisions here and stop the constitutional violation caused by the intervention of activist judges. This is going to be a big problem.”
