The U.S. Treasury Department is battling a wave of privacy litigation that sought to block it from sharing the personal data of taxpayers and government staff with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), billionaire Elon Musk’s controversial new executive branch task force that aims to aggressively cut federal spending.
The lawsuits, which spiked in February, have yielded clashing judicial rulings across the country as courts navigate the unprecedented nature and scale of the disclosure, which plaintiffs contend has the potential to impact not just federal employees, but every American resident who pays income tax, receives Social Security benefits or otherwise engages in financial transactions with the government.