Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency must resume efforts to hand over internal documents about their operations to a nonpartisan watchdog group, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The order, issued by a three-judge panel in Washington, directs Mr. Musk’s team to answer questions and provide details the group requested under federal transparency laws, such as the Freedom of Information Act. The watchdog, the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, had sued to force the secretive unit to comply with its public records requests.
Even simple details about Mr. Musk’s operations have been jealously guarded by the Trump administration. Officials have routinely declined to publicly identify DOGE members in court or document how the team has moved through the federal government, downsizing agencies, slashing grants and changing policy priorities.
While Mr. Musk has often portrayed the effort as a transparent “tech support” team, listing inefficiencies it has identified online, federal judges as well as groups suing the administration have complained that it more closely resembles an opaque task force with dubious legal authority to make the significant changes it has taken credit for.
Underlying the case is a deeper dispute about what exactly the Musk team does within the federal government, and whether court should treat it as a federal agency subject to the same requirements as others.
In March, a federal judge ruled that the DOGE team most likely is subject to those requirements, and ordered it to begin working with CREW to detail its operations and provide clarity about its relationship with federal agencies that have enacted drastic changes after meeting with DOGE’s analysts and allowing them to pore over federal databases.
The government appealed that decision, and asked the appeals court to dismiss the lawsuit. The court had entered an administrative stay on April 18, maintaining the status quo — that Mr. Musk’s operation could hold on to its internal documents — until the court had a chance to rule on pivotal questions, including where DOGE fits legally among other government entities.
Government lawyers argued that CREW’s demands placed an significant burden on the DOGE office, and that it would be forced to turn over tens of thousands of pages worth of material in a process that would take years. The government also said that the requests intruded on the internal workings of the White House, as it has routinely defined DOGE as a unit within the office of the president, which is not subject to the same disclosure rules.
But the appeals court dismissed those arguments on Wednesday, finding, among other things, that the government had not raised those concerns about intrusion when the case was being argued in the lower court in March. It said the government had therefore “forfeited” the right to raise them now.
Nonetheless, the appeals court noted that the request for DOGE’s documents was, from the start, always a relatively narrow one.
Even though DOGE must now begin detailing its internal operations and the goals and responsibilities of its members, it can still move to reject some inquiries it deems too sensitive, and only faces searching questions about whether or not it is a federal agency, subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the U.S. Department of Education, the White House and federal courts.
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