A federal appeals court on Tuesday gave the Department of Government Efficiency the green light to access personally identifying information affecting millions of Americans at multiple federal agencies, overturning a previous ruling made by a lower court earlier this year.
The 2-1 opinion comes after a district court judge in Maryland barred the Office of Personnel Management, the Education Department and the Treasury Department from disclosing to any DOGE affiliates the identifying information of members of the several labor unions who sued, as well as six military veterans who had received benefits or student loans from the government.
Now, DOGE teams detailed to each agency have legal clearance to the “high-level IT access” — as Judge Julius Richardson characterized it in the majority opinion — that an executive order from President Donald Trump in January had demanded agencies provide.