Last Friday, Judge Vargas granted a preliminary injunction filed by the Attorneys General of 19 States that restrains the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) from accessing Treasury Department payment systems. The preliminary injunction substantially tracks the temporary restraining order (“TRO”) that Judge Engelmayer granted on February 9th, which bars the Treasury Department from granting access to DOGE team members to “any payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees.” The Court’s order also provides an opportunity for Defendants to cure the procedural defects related to the protection of sensitive and confidential information, which would then possibly justify termination or modification of the preliminary injunction.
The plaintiffs’ proposed order had requested more expansive relief, which would have exceeded the scope of the present TRO to prohibit members of the DOGE team from developing automated and manual processes to halt payments coming through Treasury Department’s payment systems. The Court disagreed that the plaintiffs had demonstrated they were entitled to such “broad and sweeping” relief and emphasized that the remedy must be narrowly tailored to redress the specific harm asserted by the plaintiffs: “the threatened disclosure of the States’ sensitive bank information contained in the Treasury Department’s payment systems.”
The court explained:
[T]he Court takes heed of the Second Circuit’s admonishment that a preliminary injunction should be “narrowly tailored to fit specific legal violations.” Plaintiffs’ request for an injunction preventing the Treasury Department from developing automated and manual processes to halt payments coming through the BFS systems bears only an attenuated relation to Plaintiffs’ injury… Plaintiffs’ proposed injunction simultaneously sweeps too broadly and not broadly enough. It would not prevent, for example, the DOGE Team from accessing the BFS payments systems for any of their other stated goals, including modernizing the Treasury Department’s technology systems to improve their capability for detecting fraud. Such an injunction does not remedy Plaintiffs’ harm.”