Shortly after midnight on Friday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer issued an emergency preliminary injunction blocking Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the Treasury Department payment system.
“The court’s firm assessment is that, for the reasons stated by the States, they will face irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief,” Engelmayer wrote in a four-page order. “That is both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.”
The ruling bars the Trump administration while the states’ lawsuit is pending from granting non-Treasury employees access to Treasury Department payment systems or any other data maintained by the Treasury Department that contains personally identifying information.
Additionally, Engelmayer ordered any staffers who had unauthorized access to the Bureau of Fiscal Services since President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20 to “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James led a coalition of 19 Democratic attorneys general who sued Trump on Friday to stop Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records containing sensitive personal data such as Social Security and bank account numbers of millions of Americans.
The state prosecutors accuse the Trump administration in the 33-page civil complaint of allowing Musk’s DOGE team access to the Treasury Department’s central payment system in violation of federal law.
The states seek a declaration that Treasury Department’s policy change is unlawful and unconstitutional, in addition to preliminary and permanent injunctive relief barring the Trump administration from continuing to implement Treasury’s new policy of allowing access its Bureau of Fiscal Services payment systems containing sensitive personal information.
Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin joined the action, filed in the Southern District of New York.
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