The U.S. Department of Education has agreed to temporarily bar people affiliated with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing students’ financial data as a result of a lawsuit filed by the University of California Student Association.
The parties in the federal lawsuit filed Feb. 7 in the District Court for the District of Columbia stipulated to the restriction until at least the beginning of next week, according to court records. The defendants, including the acting secretary of education, Denise Carter, agreed to block DOGE from gaining access to the department’s computer data systems, including the National Student Loan Data System, the department’s financial management system and Common Services for Borrowers.
The lawsuit was filed with the help of the advocacy group Public Citizen in the wake of media reports that staffers and people affiliated with DOGE had gained access to several databases at the Department of Education, where personal financial data on 42 million Americans, or 12.5% of the nation’s population, are kept, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit alleges that DOGE’s apparent review of the sensitive personal information violates provisions of the federal Privacy Act and the Internal Revenue Code.
“According to public reporting, (the) defendants have violated the applicable statutory and regulatory restrictions by granting DOGE-affiliated individuals access to ED’s sensitive internal systems that house federal student financial aid information,” the lawsuit states. “Defendants have done so without making any public announcement, providing any legal justification or explanation for this decision, or undertaking the process required by law for altering the agency’s disclosure policies.”
Elon Musk and his team at DOGE have been tasked by President Donald Trump with identifying and potentially blocking waste and fraud in government spending within the federal agencies and departments within the country's federal Executive Branch. To date, DOGE has claimed to have identified waste and fraud worth hundreds of billions of dollars as they have moved systematically through departments and agencies.
Most recently, the Department of Education has become one of the latest federal departments whose spending practices have been targeted for audit and review by DOGE.
The anti-fraud efforts, however, have generated strong opposition and litigation from government worker unions and others, who have claimed DOGE - despite being tasked by the president himself - lacks the legal authority to audit executive branch agencies, nominally answerable directly to the elected president.
Adam Pulver, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs suing to block DOGE within the Department of Education, said Wednesday that the federal agency had not yet provided details about DOGE’s recent activities at the department.
“At this point, the Department of Education's lawyers have not been able to provide us or the court with any information as to what access DOGE members have had, or why they need it,” Pulver told the Southern California Record in an email, adding that he expected to learn more later in the week.
The lawsuit calls the scale of DOGE’s access to department data since the Trump administration took office unprecedented. The data includes not just student applicants’ information but often that of their parents and spouses.
“The personal data of over 42 million people lives in these systems,” the lawsuit states. “These are people who trusted ED with their sensitive personal information when they filled out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) and applied for federal student loans and grants, in reliance on the agency’s rules and other representations.”
The group Student Defense, one of the plaintiffs, indicated that the personal data contains income history, Social Security numbers and banking information.
“Turning around and handing it over to political operatives with an ax to grind is a fundamental violation of both Americans’ trust and federal law,” Student Defense’s vice president, Alex Elson, said in a prepared statement. “We urge the court to quickly stop it.”
The lawsuit seeks a court declaration saying the Department of Education acted unlawfully by giving DOGE individuals access to financial records, an injunction to stop further dissemination of the data to unauthorized individuals and an award of attorney fees.
“Students across the country did not consent to having our personal information shared with an unelected and non-congressionally approved entity like DOGE, and we absolutely did not give permission for them to access it,” University of California Student Association President Aditi Hariharan said.