A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on Monday blocking certain agencies from sharing sensitive records with President Donald Trump’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE.

Several labor unions filed a lawsuit earlier this month against the Education Department and the Office of Personnel Management to prevent them from forking over data to DOGE as it seeks to fire workers, end federal contracts and unilaterally close agencies.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman of Maryland said Monday the unions were likely to succeed in their claims that the Trump administration is violating the Privacy Act of 1974.

“Specifically, the plaintiffs have shown that Education and OPM likely violated the Privacy Act by disclosing their personal information to DOGE affiliates without their consent,” Boardman, an appointee of former President Joe Biden (D), wrote in her order.

The unions say DOGE was seeking access to systems that include Social Security numbers, bank account information and other “extraordinarily sensitive records of millions of Americans.” The victims include veterans receiving benefit payments, workers with federal employment records and millions of borrowers under federal student loan programs, they allege.

Boardman said the unions — who were joined as plaintiffs by several veterans suing as individuals — had “met their burden for the extraordinary relief they seek,” and would suffer “irreparable harm” if DOGE’s access to the data wasn’t blocked as the lawsuit moved forward.

“There is no reason to believe their access to this information will end anytime soon because the government believes their access is appropriate,” she wrote.

The lawsuit is one of a slew of complaints brought by labor unions and public interest groups aimed at slowing down DOGE’s infiltration of the federal bureaucracy. Headed by the billionaire Elon Musk, the White House’s DOGE initiative is spearheading the layoff of federal workers and cuts to government agencies and contracts.

Its potential access to data at the Education Department and other federal agencies has sparked alarm among government watchdogs. Last week a federal judge in New York extended an order in a separate case preventing DOGE from accessing Treasury Department systems that include Social Security and Medicare disbursements as well as payments to federal contractors.

The judge’s order in the Education Department case would put a “firewall” between political actors in the Trump administration and Americans’ sensitive records, said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the unions that brought the complaint.

“We brought this case to uphold people’s privacy, because when people give their financial and other personal information to the federal government — namely to secure financial aid for their kids to go to college, or to get a student loan — they expect that data to be protected and used for the reasons it was intended, not appropriated for other means,” Weingarten said in a statement.

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