A federal judge early Saturday issued an emergency order to temporarily restrict access by Elon Musk’s government efficiency program to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems.

U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer prohibited granting access to the sensitive data systems to “political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department.”

Judge Engelmayer also ordered that anyone who was barred from accessing this data but had done so since Jan. 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.”

He said the defendants, the Trump administration, should show cause before Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, who is handling the case on a permanent basis.

The order, which came in response to a lawsuit filed on Friday by Letitia James of New York along with 18 other Democratic state attorneys general, charging that when President Trump gave Mr. Musk the run of government computer systems, he had breached protections enshrined in the Constitution and “failed to faithfully execute the laws enacted by Congress.”

The attorneys general said the president had given “virtually unfettered access” to the federal government’s most sensitive information to young aides who work for Mr. Musk, who runs a program the administration calls the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, though it is not an actual department.