Unions Refile Lawsuit to Keep DOGE Out of DOL

A group of AFL-CIO unions, an economic think tank and partner organizations filed an amended lawsuit to protect the confidential information of America’s working people housed at the Department of Labor (DOL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The complaint was filed in the  U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The also filed an amended request for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to keep DOGE out of the agencies while the main complaint slowly wends its way through the court system. Last week a large demonstration at DOL stopped DOGE from meeting with DOL officials in person.

The complaint asks to keep Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros away from the agencies’ sensitive information systems, asserting that Musk “lacks statutory authority and violates the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.”

As the complaint lays out: “DOGE seeks to gain access to sensitive agency systems of data before courts can stop them, dismantle agencies before Congress can assert its Constitutional prerogatives in the federal budget, and intimidate and threaten employees who stand in their way, without regard for the consequences. The results have already been catastrophic. DOGE has seized control of some of the most carefully protected information systems housed at the Treasury Department, taken hold of all sensitive personnel information at the Office of Personnel Management, and dismantled an entire agency within a week.”

In a press release, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said

“Elon Musk and DOGE continue to jeopardize Americans’ most sensitive, personal data, and threaten our health, safety, rights, paychecks, and the essential services we depend on. Unions and allies will vigorously fight DOGE’s attempt to put working people at risk through reckless actions that endanger workers and our families. They must be stopped—and today we’re getting back in court to do just that.”

The complaint argues that “DOGE’s limited functions are to advise and assist the President; it is not empowered to perform any other functions. DOGE has no authority in law to direct operations or decisions at government agencies.”

DOGE personnel have, nevertheless, “directed operations and decisions—including some operations that appear to be contrary to law—at multiple agencies thus far, including Defendants’ agencies.”

The groups warn that “DOGE personnel have directed DOL employees to provide them with access to DOL systems or information from those systems, and DOL leadership have directed DOL employees to grant such access.”

The complaint, which originally only applied to the Labor Department, has added the Consumer Finance Protection Board (CFPB) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The unions argue that DOGE’s access to records within HHS exposes personal and health information of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, as well as personal information of HHS’s own employees.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau holds information that would allow DOGE  access to sensitive personal information about individual consumers who may have filed to the CFPB  or that the CFPB has obtained during Bureau investigations. Musk has shuttered the CFPB, putting it under the control of  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Sensitive information

The complaint is seeking to stop DOGE’s access to OSHA’s confidential information:

OSHA conducts interviews in private, and stores records of these interviews, including signed statements and OSHA’s pledges of confidentiality in its case files. Confidentiality is necessary to encourage vulnerable workers to come forward with information about their worksite and employer and to protect against retaliation. In the context of this case, disclosure of OSHA records to the leader of multiple companies with ongoing OSHA investigations presents clear risks both to workers and to the integrity of OSHA’s enforcement efforts.

The complaint warns that Musk may gain access to non-public information into OSHA investigations into his companies like Tesla, SpaceEx and The Boring Company.

As former OSHA head David Michaels explained to Eyal Press in a recent New Yorker article about DOGE’s potential impact on OSHA:

“OSHA investigations rely on confidential information provided by workers, and the names of those workers are always protected,” Michaels said. He also noted that some of these investigations include open cases targeting Musk’s companies. Beyond presenting an obvious conflict of interest, granting Musk and his associates access to the files would likely discourage workers from filing future complaints. “They will lose their confidence that OSHA can maintain their confidentiality,” Michaels predicted. “If you knew your name would not be kept secret, you’d certainly have second thoughts about reporting anything.”

Also of particular concern at DOL is the confidential information assembled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). BLS is the “principal fact-finding agency in the broad field of labor economics and statistics” and “collects, calculates, analyzes, and publishes data essential to the public, employers, researchers, and government organizations.”

BLS’s independence can be a source of political angst, as it has a long tradition of releasing benchmark data on the state of the U.S. economy with minimal advance notice to political leaders at the White House before the public release. This is because BLS data releases often “move markets” and have other significant effects on the U.S. economy. When President Trump has previously taken issue with economic indicators released by BLS, he has attacked the Bureau’s credibility, accusing them of “fraudulently manipulating job statistics,” and calling their data “phoney (sic).”

The complaint warns that “Political leaders may wish for a BLS that is less independent; one that, for example, is more willing to give the White House longer notice of economic data so that the President can prepare his messaging; or one that alters data to support the President’s political needs.”

Standing

You may recall that Judge John D. Bates rejected the union’s original bid for a TRO last week based on the the unions’ lack of “standing.” Standing means they must demonstrate a sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action being challenged .  Bates found that  the unions had “failed to show that at least one particular member or organization is substantially likely to suffer an injury due to DOGE access.

The lawsuit seeks to address that issue:

AFL-CIO and its member organizations routinely bring complaints and claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act to the Department of Labor. These claims are brought on behalf of vulnerable workers, who, without the Department of Labor’s assistance, would be deprived of even minimum wage and safe working conditions.

The AFL-CIO and its member organizations are only able to bring such claims due to the confidentiality guaranteed by the Department of Labor. Indeed, this confidentiality is essential to workers’ decisions to come forward. The unions also assist members when participating in workplace safety investigations by OSHA. OSHA regularly interviews employees at workplaces
with safety concerns, and represents to employees that their statements will be kept confidential.

This confidentiality is crucial to allowing workers to speak frankly about potentially unsafe conditions without fear of retaliation by their employers. These statements are stored in OSHA’s investigation files.

Should Defendants or their associates improperly access and/or disseminate the confidential information in Department of Labor’s data systems, that would cause irreparable injury to the AFL-CIO, its member organizations, and its members. The individuals who confidentially provided information to DOL about violations of labor laws will be likely be irreparably harmed including facing employment retaliation, for providing this information to DOL, and others will be chilled from making such complaints in the future.

Affiliates of the AFL-CIO also routinely submit claims on behalf of their members under the Black Lung Benefits Act, administered by the Department of Labor. These claims include sensitive medical, personal, and financial information. AFL-CIO, its affiliates, and their members will be irreparably harmed if this sensitive information is improperly accessed

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents over 800,000 federal employees, warns that its members may suffer irreparable harm if such confidential information  such as social security numbers, tax forms such as W-2, banking information for payment purposes, and similar are accessed by DOGE.

The Federal Employees’ Compensation Act Claims Administration, which handles workers comp complaints for federal employees, collects “sensitive personal information such as medical records, including about injuries, illness, prognosis, long-term effects of an injury, medical appointments and treatment plans.”

AFSCME notes that many of the state, county and city workers it represents “work in healthcare and treat patients with Medicare or Medicaid are required to submit certain personally identifiable information to HHS as part of the reimbursement process.”

Keep Them Out!

The complainants are asking the judge to declare unlawful the decisions by DOL, HHS, and CFPB to authorize DOGE personnel to access agency systems and records containing sensitive information, keep DOL and the other agencies from granting DOGE personnel access to their systems and records, direct DOGE personnel to immediately return or destroy all copies of material unlawfully accessed from agency systems and records, direct the agencies to remove any software installed by DOGE personnel on agency systems, stop agencies from retaliating against any employee who shields computer systems or records from unauthorized disclosure to DOGE, stop the agencies from providing non-public information or access to such information to any person with a personal or financial interest in that non-public information and keep DOGE from engaging in any action beyond their legal power or authority.

There will be a hearing Friday on the new request for a Temporary Restraining Order.