A federal judge on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order barring the Social Security Administration from granting Elon Musk and members of his Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive records stored in the agency’s systems, or from holding onto sensitive data they had already taken.
The order, issued by Judge Ellen L. Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, was the latest ruling aimed at preventing Mr. Musk’s team from sifting through an agency’s databases because of privacy concerns.
While Judge Hollander blocked Social Security’s top officials — Leland Dudek and Michael Russo — and the agency’s employees from granting Mr. Musk’s team of engineers entry to their systems, her order focused only on documents, such as tax records, that would allow Mr. Musk’s team to analyze people at an individual level. The order stated that the agency could provide Mr. Musk’s team with redacted or anonymized data that facilitated broader analysis without running afoul of federal privacy laws.
In other lawsuits challenging Mr. Musk’s aggressive incursions into the Treasury and Education Departments, judges have issued similar orders barring officials there from handing over sensitive data. As President Trump has escalated efforts to deport students and other foreign nationals, including some with valid visas, lawyers have argued that agencies’ data systems could be used to aid a broader immigration crackdown.
In sworn statements, Treasury officials have insisted that they have not given sensitive tax data stored in their systems to the Department of Homeland Security.
As in other cases, lawyers for the government had argued that the risks of data being improperly disclosed were still speculative, since the groups that filed the suits had not shown clear evidence that Mr. Musk’s team’s access to Social Security data had led to identity theft or political retaliation. The lawyers also argued that letting Mr. Musk’s team audit the agency’s books did not amount to an unlawful “disclosure,” such as a leak that could result in identity theft.
But Judge Hollander said in a 137-page opinion accompanying the order that the intrusion into Social Security data was concerning enough to justify the two-week restraining order while the lawsuit continued. She said that retirees, when submitting their bank information and other financial data to the agency to receive common benefits, had a reasonable expectation that their records would not be used to inform a governmentwide effort to slash spending.
“The unrestricted access to PII that SSA provided to the DOGE Team, without specified need, and/or without adequate training, detail agreements, and/or background investigations of all DOGE Team members,” she wrote, using abbreviations for personally identifiable information and the Social Security Administration, “would be highly offensive to an objectively reasonable person.”
She added: “The expectation of privacy shared by plaintiffs’ members is objectively reasonable. It is almost self-evident that, in our society, PII, such as SSNs, medical information, and certain financial records, are regarded as private, sensitive, and confidential information.”
Judge Hollander’s order came roughly a month after a coalition of labor unions sued to stop Mr. Musk, who has called Social Security a Ponzi scheme, from targeting the agency’s data. Mr. Musk has also backed cuts to the agency’s call centers, and other changes that critics have warned could make customer support less accessible, and even make it easier for fraudsters to impersonate Social Security beneficiaries.
The order will expire in 14 days. Judge Hollander asked both sides to file motions by March 27 so she can schedule the next steps, such as extending the injunction that would keep Mr. Musk’s team barred from accessing the databases.
