A Federal District Court judge in Washington declined to bar associates of Elon Musk from gaining access to the Education Department’s data systems, finding that the University of California Student Association, which sued to block the incursion, had not shown that students were irreparably harmed in the process.
In a late order on Monday, Judge Randolph D. Moss wrote that lawyers representing the students had failed to show that sensitive student data from the department’s databases had been illegally disseminated in a way that would justify an emergency restraining order barring Mr. Musk’s team from the agency’s systems.
Judge Moss described potential harms to the students as “entirely conjectural.” He added that the lawsuit “provides no evidence, beyond sheer speculation, that would allow the court to infer” that the Education Department or Mr. Musk’s team would “misuse or further disseminate this information.”
Lawyers representing the students had asked the court to temporarily bar Mr. Musk’s team from sifting through databases that contain identifying information about students and their families, which lawyers behind the lawsuit said had already occurred in violation of the Privacy Act of 1974.
During a hearing on Friday, Judge Moss seemed to grow annoyed about the lack of clarity that the government could provide about Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency operatives and their roles.
The office, which is not an official department but a small team housed within the executive office of the president, has already appeared to have driven the Education Department to slash funding for education research and proposed killing federal contracts by introducing new A.I.-driven tools.
When Judge Moss pressed lawyers from the Justice Department for details about the identities and activities of members of Mr. Musk’s team, they repeatedly responded that those details were uncertain.
Judge Moss stressed that it appeared that some of the Musk operatives working within the Education Department had also been rifling through data at other agencies, which went beyond anything done by the U.S. Digital Service, the office it supplanted.
“If these are people who work for an entity that was just stood up in the White House office a couple weeks ago, that have gone out in teams across the government, where individuals are not assigned to just one agency but to multiple agencies, and are going in and systematically going through vast quantities of data in a manner that is unparalleled in the history of the executive branch — in lightning speed throughout the government — that does seem a little bit different than the usual transition,” Judge Moss said.
“There is a sort of a unique lack of transparency here,” he added.
But earlier last week, Judge Moss had expressed skepticism that the students behind the lawsuit had standing to sue, since the extent to which they may have been harmed by any unauthorized access to their data remained unclear. He also seemed stuck on whether people working for Mr. Musk’s team may have been legally in the clear to look through the department’s data systems, since some appeared to have been brought in as senior employees in the Education Department with all the normal access that would be afforded to department staff members.
In the order on Monday, Judge Moss said he would consider the question of standing for another day, and would rule later on whether to allow the lawsuit to advance. A ruling that students have standing to sue would open the door to discovery, through which both sides could introduce more concrete evidence about the involvement of Mr. Musk’s operation.
Lawyers representing the students argued on Friday that when users submit their data to the department, such as through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, they are promised certain safeguards about how their data is used. They said the students they represent objected to indiscriminate analysis of their data by Mr. Musk’s team, especially in the case of one anonymous student who said in a filing that they were from a mixed-status family with relatives who were not citizens.
“The government is kind of playing a bit of a game in refusing to provide any real information here,” said Adam Pulver, a lawyer with the Public Citizen Litigation Group.
Judge Moss had appeared to agree that students applying for federal student loans in past years could not have been expected to consider whether submitting their data could put family members in jeopardy.
“You can imagine, I mean, there are people who are sick to their stomachs thinking about the fact that there may be people in the White House sorting through information relating to the immigration status of their relatives, for example,” he said.
To try to clear up confusion about the Musk operation and its recent activity within the department, the government started filing statements last week from senior department officials and Adam Ramada, a member of Mr. Musk’s team.
A sworn statement by Mr. Ramada filed on Thursday stated that he was assigned to the Education Department starting on Jan. 28 to audit contracts and grants. Those efforts included an audit of the agency’s federal student loan portfolio, Mr. Ramada said, “to ensure it is free from, among other things, fraud, duplication and ineligible loan recipients.”
It pointed to the executive order President Trump signed on Jan. 20 repurposing the U.S. Digital Service as the Department of Government Efficiency. The order directed agencies “to ensure U.S.D.S. has full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems and I.T. systems.”
In a supplemental declaration filed on Sunday, Mr. Ramada said that he joined a team of six people that has looked through the department’s contracts and grants to recommend cuts. He emphasized that he and others on the team had completed a variety of ethics and information security trainings in order to enter the agency’s databases, but acknowledged that one member of his team had not as of Sunday.
At the hearing on Friday, Judge Moss appeared uncomfortable with the broad access that Musk employees had appeared to have obtained in service of the vague goal of eliminating fraud and waste.
“That can basically cover anything, right?” he asked at one point. “Fraud, I get — ‘waste,’ you know, I suspect that if you ask Elon Musk he would say that the entire Department of Education is ‘waste.’”
Judge Moss had also appeared to push back on the notion that Mr. Musk’s perch in the White House implied his team could freely demand data from any federal agency as part of a larger political agenda.
“So what would happen, then, if the political director of the White House sought and obtained the tax returns of every Democratic candidate in the country?” Judge Moss asked at another point. “Nothing to be done about that, because it’s just — it’s within the government?”
Earlier last week, the Education Department agreed in a joint stipulation to bar anyone detailed there after Jan. 19 from entering many of its databases until Monday, including its National Student Loan Data System.
Lawyers for the Trump administration had argued that whatever Mr. Musk’s goals may be in scrutinizing the department’s data, students who had turned over their information for a loan had no right to prevent their information from being reanalyzed.
“I think it could very well be the case that folks, when they submit a FAFSA application, do not have those sorts of concrete expectations in mind,” said Simon Jerome, a lawyer from the Justice Department. “I also don’t think that the Privacy Act offers them a way into federal court to micromanage the executive branch’s operation.”
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