Federal appeals court clears DOGE to access sensitive records at agencies

A divided appeals court panel on Tuesday said the Trump administration’s U.S. DOGE Service can access sensitive data held by federal agencies, rejecting concerns that the move runs afoul of privacy law.

In a 2-1 decision, a panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit concluded that plaintiffs in the case, a group that includes labor unions and individual people receiving government benefits, had failed to show they could prevail in their legal challenge.

The plaintiffs had asked courts to keep DOGE representatives from accessing personal information held by the Treasury Department, Office of Personnel Management and Education Department, saying that this action violated federal privacy law.

Judge Julius N. Richardson, joined by Judge G. Steven Agee, wrote that the plaintiffs in the case “have struggled to show” they suffered harm in the case.

Federal privacy law “does not prohibit sharing information with those whose jobs give them good reason to access it,” Richardson wrote. He also suggested it made sense that DOGE affiliates “tasked with modernizing an agency’s software and IT systems would require administrator-level access to those systems, including any internal databases.”

Richardson was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump during his first term; Agee was nominated by President George W. Bush.

Trump in January signed an executive order creating DOGE — which stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, though it is not a Cabinet-level agency — and ordered agency heads to give it “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.” DOGE has been one of the most contentious initiatives of Trump’s second term, spurring internal disputes within the administration and legal challenges. Trump ally Elon Musk oversaw it before he stepped away from the government.

Plaintiffs in this case had sued to block DOGE from accessing personal information, and a judge in Maryland granted the request.

The Trump administration appealed, accusing the judge of micromanaging the Executive Branch. Richardson and Agee agreed in April to stay the lower court’s action during the administration’s appeal.

Writing on Tuesday, the judges pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court order in another dispute involving DOGE and sensitive data. The high court in June had cleared the way for DOGE to access Social Security Administration data in a separate case, saying this was needed for its “members to do their work.”

“This case and that one are exceedingly similar,” Richardson, joined by Agee, wrote. They vacated the lower court’s order and sent the matter back there for further proceedings.

In a dissent, Judge Robert B. King wrote that the lower court had “acted quickly — but extremely carefully” in temporarily blocking DOGE from accessing certain information.

King, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, said he would have kept the lower court order in place.