The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has removed a block on the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) access to data, arguing that the judge imposing the block erred.
Judge Julius Richardson compared DOGE to a library consultant, writing, “Barring the consultant at the library doors and requiring her to specify the precise records she needs to improve the library before she knows what improvements are needed would seem to get the order of operations precisely backward.”
“To insist that the DOGE affiliates explain in advance the exact information they need and why is to demand something just short of clairvoyance,” the judge argued.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman ruled in March that DOGE could not access data from the Department of Education, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Treasury Department.
“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 in the decision. “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.’”
An appeals court later issued a temporary block on Boardman’s order. “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 explained, emphasizing that this is “distinct from the plaintiffs’ alleged harm of unauthorized access.”
