A federal court has granted a motion, sought by AG Kathy Jennings and others, for a preliminary injunction blocking Elon Musk and his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) from accessing Americans’ private information.

“The Courts have once again stopped Donald Trump and his tech bros from trampling the Constitution,” said Attorney General Jennings. “We have a president who believes that he is a king, and that was exactly what the Founders anticipated when they created a system of checks and balances with an independent judiciary. Attorneys general have been stepping up in courtrooms all over the country to stop this Administration’s daily overreach – from Elon Musk carrying out the largest data breach in history, to the president attempting to revoke the 14th Amendment by fiat. We aren’t standing down.”

On February 7, Attorney General Jennings joined a coalition of 18 other attorneys general in filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop the unauthorized access to Americans’ private information. The lawsuit asserts that the Trump administration illegally provided Elon Musk and DOGE unauthorized access to the Treasury Department’s central payment system, and therefore to individual Americans’ and states’ sensitive information, including social security numbers and bank account information.

The following morning, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York granted the coalition’s motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking the Trump Administration from granting DOGE access to Americans’ most sensitive personal information and ordering them to immediately destroy any and all copies of records they had already obtained.

On Friday, Judge Jeannette Vargas of the Southern District of New York granted the coalition’s motion for a preliminary injunction, barring the government from allowing unauthorized government employees like Elon Musk and DOGE to access the Treasury’s central payment system while the coalition’s lawsuit proceeds.

Joining Attorney General Jennings in this lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

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