A federal judge said on Monday that the newly founded organization of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk, is probably subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The judge added that the organization has been operated in “unusual secrecy.”
The Trump administration’s claim that DOGE is exempt from responding to demands for public documents was rejected by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointment who agreed with the government watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.
The government said that the Department of General Services (DGS) is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which permits citizens to seek access to previously undisclosed documents generated by government entities, as it is a department within the Executive Office of the President.
Cooper determined that DOGE had substantially more “substantial independent authority” than the other elements of the executive office that are typically protected from the FOIA legislation.
The judgment may compel DOGE to come clean about its complicity in the administration’s decision to cancel contracts, dismantle government agencies, and fire off a large portion of the federal staff.
“Canceling any government contract would seem to require substantial authority—and canceling them on this scale certainly does,” the author said.
The court maintained that the DOGE “appears to have the power not just to evaluate federal programs, but to drastically reshape and even eliminate them wholesale,” a claim that the department chose not to dispute.
Cooper said that DOGE’s “operations thus far have been marked by unusual secrecy,” referencing news accounts of the company’s usage of a third-party server, its workers’ reluctance to reveal their identities to career authorities, and their communication using the encrypted messaging app Signal.
In response to Freedom of Information Act demands for further information on DOGE’s activities, including communications like as internal government emails and memoranda, the watchdog organization initiated the case on February 20.
Judge Cooper refused to set a deadline of Friday to produce the records, despite the group’s request that DOGE and the Office of Management and Budget be ordered to do so by Monday. The group argued that the public and Congress needed the records for the debate over government funding legislation, which must be passed by Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown.
“Unfortunately for CREW, it satisfies none of the factors entitling it to preliminary relief ordering production of its OMB requests by today’s date,” he said.
Given the “unprecedented” power DOGE was using to restructure the government, the judge instead ordered the documents to be disclosed on a “rolling basis as soon as practicable,” stating that voters and Congress needed timely information about DOGE.
While other lawsuits challenging the administration’s contention that DOGE is exempt from FOIA requests are still in their early stages, this one is among them.
