Judge Grants Preliminary Injunction Blocking DOGE From Social Security Data

A federal judge blocked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing sensitive personal information at the Social Security Administration.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander granted a preliminary injunction Thursday (April 17) that vacated and superseded a temporary restraining order she issued March 20, CNBC reported Monday (April 21).

The order blocks the Social Security Administration, its agents and its employees from granting access to Social Security numbers, medical records, mental health records, employer and employee payment records, employee earnings, addresses, bank records, tax information and family court records, according to the report.

It also orders DOGE to delete all non-anonymized personally identifiable information in its possession since Jan. 20, remove any software installed on Social Security Administration systems since Jan. 20, and stop accessing the agency’s computer or software code, the report said.

DOGE staffers can access data that does not contain personally identifiable information if they have undergone training and background checks, per the report.

The President Donald Trump administration will appeal the decision, White House Assistant Press Secretary Elizabeth Huston said in the report.

“The American people gave President Trump a clear mandate to uproot waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government,” Huston said, per the report. “The Trump administration will continue to fight to fulfill the mandate.”

When issuing the temporary restraining order March 20, Hollander said the plaintiffs in the case were “likely” to succeed with their arguments that DOGE’s actions were arbitrary and violated privacy laws.

The judge said in that ruling that DOGE did not provide any reason why it needed to access the data and allowing the group access to that data would create a risk of exposing Americans’ private information.

It was reported in February that the active commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, stepped down after a dispute over DOGE’s attempt to access the agency’s sensitive data.

On March 28, it was reported that DOGE was working on an overhaul of Social Security Administration computer systems, aiming to migrate the agency’s computer system off its longtime programming language and onto a more modern equivalent.