A federal judge temporarily blocked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing data at the Social Security Administration (SSA) on Thursday.
“The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander said in an order obtained by the Daily Beast.
Conspiracy alone, the judge noted, does not justify granting Musk’s team “unbridled access” to the private data of millions.
“[DOGE] has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack,” Hollander wrote in the scathing 137-page order.
DOGE and the White House have claimed that the task force needs access to SSA records to root out vast fraud and waste. But Hollander noted that, in court, DOGE’s lawyers never “identified or articulated even a single reason” that the service needed access to SSA’s record systems, which include things like Americans’ social security numbers, medical records, and banking information.
“Instead, the government simply repeats its incantation of a need to modernize the system and uncover fraud,” she wrote. “Its method of doing so is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.”
This, the judge suggested, made her decision on Thursday an easy one.
DOGE has been barred—for the time being—from accessing Americans' data at the SSA, handing a win to the labor unions and retirees who requested an emergency order to limit DOGE’s access at the agency.
The order also requires that DOGE’s team of 10 at the SSA delete any personally identifiable information it has already obtained.
Musk, who has gone on a rampage against federal judges who have issued rulings to hold the president’s power in check, did not immediately react to Thursday afternoon’s ruling.
