A federal judge rejected an attempt by some of the United States’s most powerful unions to block Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the Department of Labor’s data.
On Friday, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge John Bates issued a ruling striking a blow to AFL-CIO and five other large labor unions’ efforts to stop DOGE from accessing data filed in the Labor Department’s system, as well as information from the Education Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
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The labor unions failed to show that “at least one particular member is substantially likely to suffer an injury” with DOGE access, Bates wrote in a court order that also expressed some reservations about Musk accessing federal records. “This data includes the medical and financial records of millions of Americans. But on the current record, plaintiffs have failed to establish standing.”
The six unions filed a lawsuit against DOGE on Wednesday, accusing Musk’s agency of “violating multiple laws, from constitutional limits on executive power, to laws protecting civil servants from arbitrary threats and adverse action, to crucial protections for government data collected and stored on hundreds of millions of Americans.”
The Labor Department previously reached a temporary agreement with the unions to block DOGE’s access to data until Bates handed down his decision on Friday.
“Slashing waste, fraud, and abuse, and becoming better stewards of the American taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars might be a crime to Democrats, but it’s not a crime in a court of law,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields told the Washington Post in a statement defending DOGE’s authority to investigate federal bureaucracies.
Bates’s ruling against the labor unions is a victory for Musk after suffering a blow in a different court.
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A federal judge handed down a decision on Saturday prohibiting DOGE from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system as part of the department’s effort to scrutinize government spending and corruption.
DOGE is currently involved in a widespread effort investigating federal bureaucracies over how they are spending federal funds and scrutinizing allegations of corruption. The department was created by President Donald Trump after he won a second term in office and is being spearheaded by Musk.
