A federal district court in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order against Department of Education and Office of Personnel Management officials preventing them from granting access to protected agency records by DOGE affiliates within those agencies. (The complete docket in the case, American Federation of Teachers v. Bessent, is here.)
At the same time, the court declined to halt access to Treasury Department records, noting that a different court already did that, just four days ago. (That case docket, New York v. Trump, is here.)
The court also noted that several other courts have declined to issue temporary injunctions in similar cases, holding that the plaintiffs in those cases didn't show a likelihood of success on the merits or that they didn't demonstrate irreparable harm.
The court's ruling means that DOGE affiliates at Ed. and OPM can't access certain of those agencies' protected records for now, pending further litigation. Those records include names and addresses, social security numbers, dates of birth, tax and financial information, and student loan information, among other personal information. The TRO applies to members of the plaintiff unions and membership organizations, which include former federal employees, federal student aid recipients, and six military veterans who received federal benefits or student loans.
The court ruled that access to the records by DOGE affiliates likely violated the Privacy Act, which protects certain government records with personal information from disclosure, and that the DOGE affiliates couldn't show a need-to-know exception to the Act.
The ruling is a setback for DOGE and the Trump Administration, and a victory for the plaintiffs' members and their effort to protect their private information.