The ruling, issued on Tuesday, represents a win for the Trump administration.
A team of four staffers with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) can now access a Treasury Department system, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday in a win for the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas allowed four employees with DOGE, which is associated with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, to access the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which is used by the federal government to distribute trillions of dollars in payments. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Democratic-led states.
The four members of DOGE with access to the Treasury system are Thomas Krause, Linda Whitridge, Samuel Corcos, and Todd Newnam, according to the judge, who also noted that another team member, Ryan Wunderly, was allowed to access it last month.
“There is little utility in having this Court function as Treasury’s de facto human resources officer each time a new team member is onboarded,” Vargas wrote, in part.
Later in the ruling, the judge wrote that the four aforementioned members of DOGE “have satisfied the conditions to be carved out of the definition of Restricted Personnel, [and] they shall be permitted access to Treasury Payment Systems on the same terms as Wunderly.”
“For the avoidance of doubt, however, Defendants are not required to obtain a judicial determination that a particular individual has satisfied the Training, Vetting and Mitigation Procedures before such person may be granted access to Treasury Payment Systems,” the order concluded.
The ruling marks a victory for DOGE and the Trump administration, which have faced a handful of lawsuits over the task force’s access to various government systems.
In the Treasury case, a group of Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit to block DOGE’s access, leading Vargas to issue a temporary injunction, but she allowed the task force to create a system to access the data with appropriate safeguards intact.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in February that she and 18 other Democratic attorneys general filed the lawsuit, according to a news release from her office.
James, a Democrat, had argued that President Donald Trump “does not have the power to give away Americans’ private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress,” adding that DOGE has “no authority to access Americans’ private information and some of our country’s most sensitive data.”
Lawyers for the Trump administration have argued in court filings that what the states had requested in their lawsuit is an overreach of their authority.
“Plaintiffs confirm in their opposition that they seek something remarkable: A court order commanding that a segment of an executive agency be cordoned off from properly named ‘political appointees,’ while giving access to select ‘civil servants,’” they wrote.
“The government is aware of no example of a court ever trying to micromanage an agency in this way, or sever the political supervision of the Executive Branch in such a manner.”
After it was set up by Trump in January via an executive order, DOGE has gone to various agencies in a bid to find fraud, waste, and abuse. On its website, DOGE says that its efforts have led to the cancellation of more than 25,000 federal grants and contracts, leading to savings of about $175 billion so far.
Also on Tuesday, a federal judge in a separate case allowed a group of 14 states to move ahead with a lawsuit challenging DOGE and Musk’s attempts to cut federal spending, rejecting the administration’s efforts to dismiss the matter.
The states’ lawsuit could proceed against Musk and DOGE because it made a plausible claim that Musk’s cost-cutting activities were “unauthorized by any law,” according to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling in a Washington federal court.
The attorneys general of New Mexico, Oregon, and 12 other states filed their lawsuit in February, alleging that Trump has given Musk “unchecked legal authority” without authorization from the U.S. Congress. The lawsuit seeks to halt DOGE’s efforts to slash federal spending and shut down U.S. agencies disfavored by Trump.
The Epoch Times contacted the Treasury Department for comment on Wednesday but did not receive a response by publication time.
Reuters contributed to this report.