A federal appeals court ruled this week that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) may access records in the Education Department, the Treasury Department, and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), lifting
The ruling lifts the injunction from U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman.
According to the court, the government has “met its burden of a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits of their appeal.”
“In factual terms, the plaintiffs complain that the agencies granted unauthorized parties access to their information. And this … bore a close relationship to the harm inflicted by the common-law tort of intrusion upon seclusion. But intrusion upon seclusion has long been understood to guard not against the disclosure of sensitive information as such, but against the feeling of unease when and where one should ideally be at peace,” the filing says.
“Its harm is felt when a reporter accosts a convalescing patient in the hospital” or “when a private detective peers through a neighbor’s bedroom window for week,” the filing explains, emphasizing that this is “distinct from the plaintiffs’ alleged harm of unauthorized access.”
The ruling addresses a March 24 decision from U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, who blocked DOGE from accessing the personal records in the three federal agencies.
“Enacted 50 years ago, the Privacy Act protects from unauthorized disclosure the massive amounts of personal information that the federal government collects from large swaths of the public,” Boardman wrote. “Congress’s concern back then was that ‘every detail of our personal lives can be assembled instantly for use by a single bureaucrat or institution’ and that ‘a bureaucrat in Washington or Chicago or Los Angeles can use his organization’s computer facilities to assemble a complete dossier of all known information about an individual.’”
“Those concerns are just as salient today. No matter how important or urgent the President’s DOGE agenda may be, federal agencies must execute it in accordance with the law. That likely did not happen in this case,” the court document read.
