A federal appeals court on Tuesday allowed teams affiliated with the Department of Government Efficiency to gain access to potentially sensitive data on millions of Americans, overruling a lower court that had blocked that access in February.
By a 2-1 vote, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit granted the access to data stored at the Treasury Department, the Education Department and the Office of Personnel Management, citing the Supreme Court’s decision in a similar case in June involving Social Security data.
The decision cleared the way for teams put in place this year by Elon Musk to reclaim “high-level I.T. access” to government databases, Judge Julius N. Richardson wrote, over the objections of a number of labor unions who had sued, arguing the move violated federal privacy laws.
Writing for the majority, Judge Richardson said the circumstances of the case mirrored those in a lawsuit involving data that the Supreme Court had weighed as an emergency application this year. In an unsigned order in that case, the Supreme Court intervened to allow the DOGE analysts to continue sifting through the records “in order for those members to do their work.”
Besides sensitive financial data linked to Social Security benefits, the government regularly collects other information on residents such as addresses, employer details and related statistics that could be used to identify individual people. The decision on Tuesday also concerned that kind of data, as well as information on student debt stored at the Education Department, which collects personal financial data on more than 40 million borrowers.
Judge Richardson, a Trump appointee, and Judge G. Steven Agee, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, formed the majority.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post Appeals Court Allows DOGE Access to Sensitive Data at Several Agencies appeared first on New York Times.
