By Nathan Layne
(Reuters) - A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction on Thursday that extends a ban on billionaire Elon Musk’s aides from accessing private information on millions of Americans held in the Social Security Administration’s computer systems.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander of Maryland said Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had failed to show the need for the "unprecedented, unfettered access" it had sought to the SSA’s data to achieve their stated goal of rooting out fraud.
Hollander had issued a temporary restraining order last month restricting DOGE access to SSA data, but it was due to expire on Thursday. The preliminary injunction cements the restrictions for a longer time while the case plays out.
The injunction is a win for the two labor unions and an advocacy group that sued SSA, Musk, DOGE and others in February, seeking to stop DOGE members from accessing some of the agency’s most sensitive data systems.
Hollander said the plaintiffs would likely succeed on their claim that DOGE staff members had violated privacy laws in their various efforts so far to access data and that an injunction was needed to protect Americans from "irreparable harm."
"For some 90 years, SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records. This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation," Hollander wrote in her 145-page ruling.
Hollander was nominated to the federal bench by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat. President Donald Trump is a Republican.
While the injunction prohibits DOGE staffers and anyone working with them from accessing data containing personal information, it does allow them to access data that has been stripped of private information, as long as they have gone through the proper training and passed background checks.
The advocacy group Democracy Forward said the injunction marked an important step in their case.
"This is a significant relief for the millions of people who depend on the Social Security Administration to safeguard their most personal and sensitive information," Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, said in a statement.
Spokespeople for the SSA and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.
The case has shed light on the amount of personal information DOGE staffers have been given access to in the SSA’s databases, which hold vast amounts of sensitive data on most Americans.
During a hearing on the injunction in Baltimore on Tuesday, Hollander expressed skepticism about DOGE’s need for the broad access they have sought to data in order to find what she described as questionable assertions of widespread fraud.