The Alliance for Retired Americans says the Treasury Department broke the law by allowing billionaire Elon Musk access to Medicare and Social Security systems.
WASHINGTON — A coalition of retirees and government workers filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday seeking to block the Treasury Department from handing over access to milllions of Americans’ personal information to billionaire Elon Musk.
Musk’s outsized, but poorly defined, role in President Donald Trump’s administration has increasingly come under fire as the advisory body he heads, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has sought access to sensitive data and federal payment systems. Musk and DOGE took responsibility Monday for the administration’s efforts to shut down USAID, which has for decades been the country’s primary method of distributing international humanitarian aid, writing on his social media site X, formerly Twitter, that he’d spent the weekend “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
Last week, the Associated Press reported DOGE employees had gained access to sensitive Treasury data, including Social Security and Medicare payment systems. Acting Deputy Secretary David Lebryk was reportedly placed on leave and later resigned after resisting efforts by individuals working for Musk to access those systems.
DOGE’s increasing access to sensitive federal data has set off alarm bells across the government and drawn harsh rebukes from Democrats in Congress. On Friday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Finance, urged the federal government’s top auditor to launch an investigation into whether Musk and DOGE were violating federal privacy laws.
“It is not clear why these individuals were granted unfettered access to such data, what they could do with it once inside these systems, and what protections are in place to ensure the Department has been complying with its legal obligations under the Privacy Act, 26 U.S.C. 6103, as well as other statutes and Treasury regulations that protect such sensitive information about millions of Americans,” Warren and Wyden wrote in a letter to Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro, who heads the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
On Monday, an advocacy organization representing millions of American retirees and the nation’s largest federal workers union filed a lawsuit in federal court in D.C. arguing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had violated the law by giving Musk and DOGE access to sensitive personal and financial information. The lead plaintiff, the Alliance for Retired Americans, said it represents more than 4 million members who receive Social Security benefits, government pensions, veterans benefits and payments and medical support under the federal Black Lung Benefits Act.
“The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented,” the lawsuit reads. “Millions of people cannot avoid engaging in financial transactions with the federal government and, therefore, cannot avoid having their sensitive personal and financial information maintained in government records.”
The suit seeks an order declaring Musk and DOGE’s access to Treasury records is unlawful and an injunction barring the department from continuing to permit such access.
“People who must share information with the federal government should not be forced to share information with Elon Musk or his ‘DOGE,” the lawsuit reads. “And federal law says they do not have to.”
Musk has been undeterred in the face of criticism of DOGE, which claimed to have cut more than $1 billion in federal spending as of last week. On Tuesday, he posted a poll on X asking followers if they would would like DOGE to “audit the IRS.” Musk has also taken aim at other federal agencies, including the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a watchdog agency created by Congress following the 2008 financial crisis that has long been a target of Republicans.
The Alliance for Retired Americans suit was filed by attorneys for the public interest law firm Public Citizens Litigation Group and State Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit government watchdog organization. The two organizations are also representing the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the plaintiffs in the suit filed Monday, in a separate case challenging DOGE’s composition under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
