A new lawsuit submitted by more than 100 federal workers in the US Southern District Court of New York today claims that the Trump administration’s decision to give Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to their sensitive personal data, is illegal. The plaintiffs are asking the court to cut off an order to cut off the office of the Office of Personal Management (OPM), which functions as the HR section of the United States and houses data on federal workers such as their numbers of social Security, phone numbers and staff files. Wired previously reported that Musk and people with connections with him took over.
“OPM-defendants have, the Doge defendants and the agents of Doge-of which many are under the age of 25 and until recently employees of Musk’s private enterprises-‘no access’ to the OPM computer systems, without any normal, strict national security exploration, or Was it or it was or was it or was it. , ”Claims the complaint. The plaintiffs are accused of the violation of the Privacy Act, a 1974 law that determines how the government can collect, use and store personal information.
Elon Musk, the Doge organization, the office of staff management, and acting director of OPM, Charles Ezell, are named defendants in the case. The plaintiffs include more than a hundred individual federal workers from across the US government, as well as groups representing them, including AFL-CIO, a coalition of trade unions, the US Federation of Public Servants and the Association of Administrative Legal Judges. The AF represents more than 800,000 federal workers ranging from employees of the Social Security Administration to Border Patrol agents.
The plaintiffs are represented by prominent lawyers for the technical industry, including advocates of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group for digital rights, as well as Mark Lemley, an intellectual property and technical advocate that recently dropped Meta as a client in The controversial AI headline lawsuit because he recently objected to what he claims is the company’s embrace of ‘neo -Nazi madness’.
“The illegal access of dogs to employee records seems to be the means with which they want to achieve a number of other illegal purposes. This is how, for example, they received a list of all government officials to offer their illegal buyout offer. This gives them access to information about transgender employees so that they can discriminate against the employees illegally. And it lies the foundation for the illegal firing we have seen in various departments, ”Lemley told Wired.
EFF attorney Victoria Noble says there is a greater concern about access to Doge as a result of the political nature of Musk’s project. For example, Noble says, the risk exists that Musk and his acolytes can use OPM data to target ideological opponents or “people who consider them disloyal”.
“There is a significant risk that this information can be used to identify employees to end essentially based on improper considerations,” Noble told Wired. “There is medical information, there is information about disabilities, there is information about people’s involvement in trade unions.”
The office of staff management and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The team behind the lawsuit plans to push even further. “It’s just phase one, which is focused on getting an order to stop the constant violation of the law,” Lemley says. The next phase will include the submission of a class action lawsuit on behalf of the federal workers.