Judge Rules Against DOGE Access to Personal Data

Elon Musk's aggressive cost-cutting in the federal government ran into two more legal challenges on Monday:

• A federal judge temporarily barred the Department of Government Efficiency from gaining access to sensitive employee information held by the Office of Personnel Management and the Education Department, reports Reuters. OPM is essentially the HR department of the government, notes Politico, which calls the ruling by US District Judge Deborah Boardman in Maryland "the most wide-ranging block on DOGE's activities to date." Unless overturned, it could seriously crimp Musk's team. The judge is an appointee of former President Biden.

• Federal workers updated a lawsuit in California, accusing Musk of violating the law with his demand that employees explain their weekly accomplishments or risk losing their jobs, reports the AP. "No OPM rule, regulation, policy, or program has ever, in United States history, purported to require all federal workers to submit reports to OPM," said the complaint on behalf of plaintiffs represented by the group State Democracy Defenders Fund. The complaint described the threat of mass firings as "one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country."

(Various federal departments instructed their employees not to respond to Musk's demand for a weekly accounting of tasks.)