Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) won’t be restricted from accessing data at the Department of Education, a federal judge decided late Monday.
A large group of students who receive financial aid through Education Department programs had asked Judge Randy Moss of the DC District Court for emergency intervention to protect their data as DOGE affiliates work with computer systems. But the judge said the student group who brought the lawsuit couldn’t show at this time how they were being harmed.
Violations of privacy law weren’t certain to take place at this time, Moss noted.
This is the third time in recent days emergency lawsuits built around privacy concerns have failed to convince courts to step in to curtail DOGE’s work in executive branch agencies. Several of the early tests in court of DOGE have been the group’s access to sensitive data, but judges in Washington, DC, haven’t been convinced their work is causing irreparable harm at this point.
In his ruling Monday declining to put in place a temporary restraining order on DOGE, Moss noted that the students could come back to court later seeking financial compensation if their data is disclosed in an unauthorized way.
The lawsuits continue however, and new types of cases against DOGE that are broader than just privacy claims have been filed more recently.
Earlier on Monday, Moss declined to block Musk’s use of a server to send out mass emails to government employees, and a different judge last week decided not to restrict DOGE’s access to data at the Labor Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
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