AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS Et Al. Vs. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR VINCE MICONE Et Al.

1. Since President Trump’s inauguration on January 20, the “U.S. DOGE Service,” led by White House official Elon Musk, has launched a sweeping campaign to access highly sensitive information systems and dismantle and restructure multiple federal agencies unilaterally.

2. The speed of these efforts is core to the project. At every step, DOGE is violating multiple laws, from constitutional limits on executive power, to laws protecting civil servants from arbitrary threats and adverse action, to crucial protections for government data collected and stored on hundreds of millions of Americans.

3. DOGE seeks to gain access to sensitive systems before courts can stop them, dismantle agencies before Congress can assert its prerogatives in the federal budget, and intimidate and threaten employees who stand in their way, worrying about the consequences later.

4. 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.

5. Today, they will come for the Department of Labor. On information and belief, the pattern will be the same: they will demand that DOGE staff be granted access to systems that they are legally barred from; they will fire any employee who protects the integrity of those systems; and they will claim power and authority that Congress has never granted them with respect to agency staff and Department programs.

6. Contrary to its statutory and regulatory obligations, the Department of Labor and its current leadership are acceding to this takeover, ordering Department employees to give DOGE access to whatever they ask for regardless of security protocols—or risk termination.

7. As detailed below, DOGE’s imminent access to sensitive information systems, with the Department’s blessing, lack statutory authority and violates the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

8. Absent this Court’s intervention, DOGE will have access to highly sensitive data, including, among many others, medical and benefits information about all federal workers with worker compensation or Black Lung claims, the identities of vulnerable workers who have sought the Department’s protection via wage and hour or occupational safety complaints, and investigative and litigation records of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data crucial to an accurate understanding of the state of our economy.

9. DOGE will also have access to information regarding investigations of Mr. Musk’s corporate interests and the sensitive trade secret information held by the Department, including those of the competitors of those corporate interests.