Feb. 3 (UPI) — Three U.S. government employee unions filed a lawsuit Monday against the Treasury, alleging that its sharing of confidential information of millions of Americans with the Elon Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency violated the law.
Despite its name, the Department of Government Efficiency, also known by the acronym DOGE, is not a federal department but a Temporary Organization to be terminated on July 4, 2026. It has attracted much controversy since it was formed via President Donald Trump‘s Jan. 20 executive to trim spending from the U.S. budget and shrink the federal government.
The lawsuit, filed Monday by Public Citizen Litigation Group and State Democracy Defenders Fund, accuses the Treasury, its secretary Scott Bessent and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service of violating the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Internal Revenue Code. The lawsuit alleges that last week, the Treasury illegally granted Musk and DOGE-affiliated individuals full access to the bureau’s data computer systems.
According to the lawsuit, the information of millions of Americans, including their Social Security numbers and bank account information, was made available to DOGE despite federal laws protecting that information from improper disclosure.
DOGE members gained access to the information by Bessent after an employee in charge of the bureau rejected their original request, the lawsuit states, adding that Bessent then placed that civil servant on leave.
Bessent granted DOGE access to the restricted information “without making any public announcement, providing any legal justification or explanation for his decision, or undertaking the process required by law for altering the agency’s disclosure policies,” the lawsuit states.
“The scale of the intrusion into individual’s privacy is massive and unprecedented,” it said.
“Secretary Bessent’s action granting DOGE-affiliated individuals full, continuous and ongoing access to that information for an unspecified period of time means that retirees, taxpayers, federal employees, companies and other individuals from all walks of life have no assurance that their information will receive the protection that federal law affords.”
DOGE could not be reached for comment.
The lawsuit comes as DOGE on Monday also seized control of the U.S. Agency for International Development, an independent agency that spends billions of dollars a year to fight poverty, disease and the effects of natural disasters around the world.
Musk, the world’s richest man and an unelected official, accused the agency — without providing proof — of supporting “radical left causes” that were “anti-American.”
When asked by reporters Monday why it was important for Musk to have access to the Treasury’s payment system, Trump said the Tesla, X and SpaceX owner “can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval and we’ll give him approval when appropriate.”
“We put him in charge of seeing what he can do with certain groups and numbers,” Trump said from the White House. “They’re finding tremendous waste.”
Similar to the situation at the Treasury, top USAID civil servants who refused DOGE access to its information were put on leave.
Democrats have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of DOGE, with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., describing the organization as “an unelected shadow government” that is “conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.”
From the Senate floor on Monday, he told colleagues that DOGE was “spreading across the federal government like a virus, and it’s American people who will pay the price when their benefits and payments are illegally taken away. ”
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., announced Monday legislation will soon be introduced to prevent unlawful access to the bureau’s payment system.
The lawsuit, filed Monday on behalf of the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees and the Service Employees International Union, asks the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to prevent the Treasury from continuing to permit DOGE access to the information and deny DOGE future access to it.
“We are outraged and alarmed that the Trump Administration has allowed so-called DOGE staff to violate the law and access millions of older Americans’ sensitive personal and financial data,” Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said in a statement.
“We urge the court to quickly act to stop this unlawful theft of our data.”
DOGE is also facing a series of lawsuits for violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which establishes protections to prevent advisory committees from being inaccessible to the public and biased or partial.
The lawsuits allege that DOGE is neither accessible nor objective and is run by billionaires who seek to benefit from the influence and access they have to the federal government.