A federal judge ruled in favor of the Trump administration on Friday, deciding not to immediately block Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing systems operated by the U.S. Department of Labor.
U.S. District Judge John Bates for the D.C. Circuit, a George W. Bush appointee, expressed some concerns about DOGE accessing the systems but ruled that plaintiffs had not demonstrated any legal injury thus far.
“Although the court harbors concerns about defendants’ alleged conduct, it must deny plaintiffs’ motion at this time,” Bates wrote, per Fox News.
The Labor Department has investigated companies such as SpaceX and Tesla, both owned by Elon Musk, who leads DOGE, and maintains records on these investigations. The department also possesses information regarding the trade secrets of these companies’ competitors, according to the lawsuit filed by the unions.
The department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has investigated and fined SpaceX and Tesla over worker safety issues, according to the unions.
The Labor Department’s systems also house medical and financial records for millions of Americans, including those who have filed safety complaints against their employers.
This ruling follows an agreement earlier this week by the Trump administration, which decided that DOGE would not gain access to the Labor Department until the court rendered its decision.
The Justice Department confirmed that three DOGE staff members are assigned to the Labor Department, reporting to its acting secretary. These staffers have been made special government employees and are required to adhere to the law regarding any sensitive information about corporations or workers as they carry out their review.
Musk’s DOGE team had gained access to sensitive Treasury Department payment systems, but a judge has since blocked their access to Treasury records containing sensitive personal data, such as Social Security and bank account numbers, for millions of Americans, Fox added. DOGE has also played a significant role in dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and has offered financial incentives to millions of federal workers to resign.
“At every step, DOGE is violating multiple laws, from constitutional limits on executive power, to laws protecting civil servants from arbitrary threats and adverse action, to crucial protections for government data collected and stored on hundreds of millions of Americans,” labor union lawyers represented by the advocacy group Democracy Forward wrote in their complaint.
Labor Department leadership told a union member this week that DOGE would be visiting and workers should let them do “whatever they ask, not to push back, not to ask questions,” the unions noted in their filing.
The Justice Department argued in a counter-brief that there is no evidence of wrongdoing and the judge should not issue “a sweeping, prophylactic order … based on plaintiffs’ rank speculation that DOL will violate the law.”
Security prevented Democrats from entering the Department of Education building in Washington, D.C., on Friday morning, meanwhile, after learning that DOGE was targeting that agency following reports that Trump was planning to issue an executive order to the department secretary directing that the agency’s role and cost be reduced as much as possible.
In late January, Trump issued an order “ending radical indoctrination” taking place in public schools around the country.
“Parents trust America’s schools to provide their children with a rigorous education and to instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation and the values for which we stand,” the order begins.
“In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight. Such an environment operates as an echo chamber, in which students are forced to accept these ideologies without question or critical examination. In many cases, innocent children are compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics.
“In other instances, young men and women are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be blamed. These practices not only erode critical thinking but also sow division, confusion, and distrust, which undermine the very foundations of personal identity and family unity,” the order added.
“My Administration will enforce the law to ensure that recipients of Federal funds providing K-12 education comply with all applicable laws prohibiting discrimination in various contexts and protecting parental rights,” it said.
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