District Court Partially Dissolves Injunction on DOGE Access to Treasury Information
The U.S. District Court for Northern California Friday partially dissolved a preliminary injunction prohibiting Treasury Department employees who are not in a Senate-confirmed position from accessing department systems that contain personally identifiable information (PII) or financial information of payees. The court ruled the states were unlikely to succeed on their E-Government and Privacy Act of 1974 claims.
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Since submissions from the government "largely alleviate" the plaintiffs' concerns, such as "declarations detailing the types of training that all [Bureau of Financial Services (BFS)] employees and contractors with access to BFS data systems are required to complete," the complaint has been adequately satisfied, said Judge Jeannette Vargas.
Additionally, the judge denied the motion for reconsideration brought by the coalition of 19 states -- plaintiffs in the case -- on the grounds that they did not meet the stringent standard for reconsideration. The motion included a "new" theory of why a preliminary injunction was needed, but "it was Plaintiffs’ responsibility to raise these arguments in its prior briefing," she said. "They failed to do so."
Vargas wasn't swayed by the states' argument to invoke the Privacy Act. Nothing in the statute "grants any rights or protections to state governments or empowers state governments to take any action to protect data, let alone data in federal records."
"It is 'black letter law' that a motion for reconsideration cannot 'advance new facts, issues or arguments not previously presented to the Court,'" which the plaintiffs tried to do, Vargas said. "The Court has 'sound discretion' to grant or deny a motion for reconsideration."
Case 25-01144 began when the states filed a suit on Feb. 7 against the Trump administration to stop unauthorized access to private information of Americans provided to Elon Musk and DOGE, alleging violations of the Privacy Act and E-Government Act (see 2502070050), which Trump opposed on Feb. 11 (see 2502120036).