The Department of Justice argued to an appellate court on Monday that the Department of Government Efficiency’s access to data stored within a trio of federal agencies should not be scrutinized by the courts.
DOJ attorney Jack Starcher told a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that it should toss out a lower court’s injunction against DOGE because its access to personal data across the various agencies aligned with the Privacy Act.
“The implication of this case is that suddenly every single one of those [access] decisions is subject to some sort of need-to-know judicial supervision. That’s never happened before,” Starcher said.
He argued that the panel should vacate the injunction issued by Maryland-based Judge Deborah Boardman, a Biden appointee, blocking certain DOGE employees from accessing sensitive data within the Treasury and Education departments and the Office of Personnel Management.
Starcher noted that at Treasury alone, hundreds of non-DOGE employees already had access to the same data and that the Privacy Act ensured that DOGE and non-DOGE employees alike would handle the data responsibly.
Trump created DOGE when he took office and ordered it to spend the first roughly 18 months of his presidency modernizing government technology to help identify wasteful spending within the executive branch. DOGE staffers have on a rolling basis been assigned to various agencies to review data-keeping systems, according to the government.
Starcher’s arguments were made as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Federation of Teachers and other unions and individuals, who argued that about two dozen DOGE affiliates accessed personal information without showing any need for that access, in violation of the Privacy Act.
The case came as several courts have weighed lawsuits about DOGE’s access to people’s sensitive information, including their Social Security numbers, loan information, financial records, and addresses.
Starcher’s arguments mirrored those made in one such case Friday by Solicitor General John Sauer to the Supreme Court. The high court has yet to weigh in on any case related to DOGE’s access.
Sauer asked the justices to halt an injunction issued by Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander, another Maryland-based judge appointed by Obama, that barred DOGE from accessing Social Security Administration records.
“Respondents cannot plausibly claim any concrete injury from having particular agency employees—i.e., members of the SSA DOGE team—access their information when those employees are subject to the same legal and ethical obligations against further dissemination that bind all agency employees,” Sauer wrote. “Respondents do not suffer any concrete injury based on which SSA employees have access to their data subject to those safeguards.”
The three-judge panel, consisting of Judges Bruce King, G. Steven Agee, and Julius Richardson, also recently weighed in on that case as part of the full circuit’s 9-6 decision to keep the Social Security Administration injunction against DOGE in place. Agee and Richardson, both Republican-appointed judges, sided with the minority.
King, the lone judge appointed by a Democrat on the three-judge panel, sided with the majority and made his skepticism of DOGE apparent during Monday’s oral arguments.
“What are we talking about here? A lot of private information, my friend,” King said. “Stacks on stacks of private information.”
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ASKS SUPREME COURT TO ALLOW DOGE TO ACCESS TO SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEMS
The Supreme Court asked for a response by May 12 in that case, but Starcher asked the three judges of the 4th Circuit not to wait on that case to vacate the injunction that was the subject of Monday’s oral arguments.
Starcher said that waiting was unnecessary because he was “confident” the high court would rule in the Trump administration’s favor.