NEW YORK (Reuters) -A federal judge extended a block on Elon Musk’s government cost-cutting team from accessing payment systems at the U.S. Treasury Department on Friday, while another judge allowed the billionaire’s DOGE staffers to access records at health, labor and consumer financial protection agencies.
Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency has swept through federal agencies since Republican Donald Trump became president last month and put the chief executive of carmaker Tesla in charge of rooting out wasteful spending as part of Trump’s dramatic overhaul of government, which included thousands of job cuts on Friday.
In Manhattan, U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas extended a temporary block on DOGE that was put in place on Saturday, which prevented Musk’s team from accessing Treasury systems responsible for trillions of dollars of payments.
The judge said at a court hearing she would not yet rule on a request from 19 Democratic state attorneys general for a longer-lasting preliminary injunction on DOGE’s access to the systems.
The case by the attorneys general is one of at least 20 related to efforts to slash the size of the government. Around 70 lawsuits have been filed challenging Trump initiatives, from ending birthright citizenship to limiting federal funding for transgender health treatments, and many policies have been blocked by courts.
The attorneys general alleged that Musk’s team has no legal power to access the payment systems that contain sensitive personal information on millions of Americans and that Musk and his team could disrupt funding for health clinics, preschools and other programs.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk and other Trump allies have called for judges to be impeached in response to rulings against his DOGE team, although the president said he would obey court orders.
A federal judge in Washington declined a request by unions and nonprofits to temporarily block Musk’s team from accessing records at the departments of Labor and of Health and Human Services, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
U.S. District Judge John Bates said in a written opinion it was likely that government was correct that DOGE was an agency, allowing it to detail its staff to other government departments. However, Bates called his finding a “close question,” noting that the government did not want DOGE to be considered an agency for purposes of another federal law, which would subject it to open records requests.
Bates, who was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, said DOGE was a “Goldilocks entity: not an agency when it is burdensome but an agency when it is convenient.”
Bates asked the parties to propose a schedule for determining if he should issue a longer-term preliminary injunction blocking DOGE from the agencies.
Musk reposted a message on his X social media platform praising the ruling. “This is a HUGE win!” the original message said.
At two other court hearings on Friday, judges declined to rule immediately on requests to block or extend orders barring the DOGE team access to government systems.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss considered a request by the University of California Student Association to extend a temporary block on DOGE from accessing systems at the Department of Education, which the students said would violate privacy and administrative procedure laws.
The judge, appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, said he would issue a decision by Monday.
The Trump administration has said that access is crucial to allow DOGE to reduce waste, fraud and abuse in student loan programs at a department that the president and Musk say should be eliminated.
“What does that mean, fraud, waste and abuse?” Moss asked a Justice Department attorney at the hearing. “I expect if you ask Elon Musk, he would say the entire Department of Education is waste.”
A group of Democratic attorneys general sued Musk, Trump and DOGE on Thursday, alleging Musk’s appointment was unconstitutional and asking a federal judge to bar him from accessing and using government data, cancelling contracts or making personnel decisions.
At a hearing in that case on Friday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington was skeptical of the states’ request and did not say when she would rule.
Courts have blocked most of the Trump initiatives that have been legally challenged. Most of the cost-cutting campaign appears to be focused on programs opposed by political conservatives.
(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, and Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Jack Queen in New York and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Matthew Lewis, Nick Zieminski, Sandra Maler and William Mallard)
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