Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been blocked from accessing the personal financial data of millions of Americans in Treasury Department records, according to court documents.
District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued a preliminary injunction on February 8 to prohibit access, ordering Elon Musk and his team to immediately destroy any copies of records.
The move comes after 19 state attorneys general sued the Trump administration after DOGE, a cost-cutting initiative led by Elon Musk, was given access to the records.
They argued access for Elon Musk, a “special government employee”, and DOGE, which is not an official government department, violated federal law.
In a post on X, Elon Musk called the ruling “absolutely insane”.
“How on Earth are we supposed to stop fraud and waste of taxpayer money without looking at how money is spent?” he wrote.
The Democratic state attorneys general sued Donald Trump, the Treasury Department and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on February 7.
Judge Engelmayer’s order, issued early on February 8, said the states would “face irreparable” harm without immediate relief.
“That is both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking,” the order read.
The order restrains the defendants from granting access to Treasury Department records containing personally identifiable or confidential information to special government employees, political appointees, and other employees from outside the department.
The injunction restricts anyone else from accessing those records other than civil servants who need to do so for their work at the Bureau of Fiscal Services and have passed background checks.
The judge further ordered any person among those restricted to immediately destroy copies of records.
The conditions will remain in place until the next court hearing on February 14.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was among the coalition of attorneys general who brought the lawsuit, said the Trump administration had given Musk and DOGE “unprecedented access” to personal data.
“Over the past week, my office has heard from more than a thousand New Yorkers who were afraid they would lose their privacy and the critical funding their communities count on because of Musk and DOGE’s interference,” she said.
Elon Musk has been heavily involved in upheaval during Donald Trump’s second term, with DOGE leading major cuts at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which distributes billions of dollars of aid globally.
