The federal government has restricted the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) access to the Treasury Department’s payment systems.
“The Defendants will not provide access to any payment record or payment system of records maintained by or within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service,” a February 5 proposed order says. Access to the records may be provided to several Special Government Employees as “read-only.”
The order has since been approved.
A lawsuit filed that same day alleges that DOGE is “violating multiple laws, from constitutional limits on executive power, to laws protecting civil servants from arbitrary threats and adverse action, to crucial protections for government data collected and stored on hundreds of millions of Americans.”
“DOGE seeks to gain access to sensitive systems before courts can stop them, dismantle agencies before Congress can assert its prerogatives in the federal budget, and intimidate and threaten employees who stand in their way, worrying about the consequences later,” the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit condemns that DOGE “dismantled an entire agency within a week.”
Another filing criticizes Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for allowing DOGE access to the system. The filing says Bessent “decided behind closed doors to allow individuals not involved in the processing of the government’s financial transactions to root around in the Bureau’s records. Giving access to those records is unlawful.”
“And the longer that the private information of Plaintiffs’ members remains accessible to unauthorized third parties, the greater the irreparable injury is. After all, as long as the sensitive data of Plaintiffs’ members remains accessible to Mr. Musk and other members of DOGE, the more opportunity there is for that data to be disclosed to still more unauthorized third parties, either accidentally or deliberately,” they added.
The lawsuit sought to obtain a temporary restraining order.
