Lex Lumina Wins Preliminary Injunction In OPM/DOGE Lawsuit
June 9, 2025 - Following an eight-hour mini-trial led by Lex Lumina managing partner Rhett Millsaps on May 29, a federal judge in New York today granted a preliminary injunction in our lawsuit challenging the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s unlawful disclosure of records to DOGE and its agents.
Judge Denise L. Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found that OPM violated the Privacy Act and bypassed its established cybersecurity practices under the Administrative Procedures Act. The Court will decide the scope of the injunction later this week. The plaintiffs have asked the Court to halt DOGE agents’ access to OPM records and for DOGE and its agents to delete any records that have already been disclosed. OPM’s databases hold highly sensitive personal information about tens of millions of federal employees, retirees, and job applicants.
“The plaintiffs have shown that the defendants disclosed OPM records to individuals who had no legal right of access to those records,” Judge Cote found. “In doing so, the defendants violated the Privacy Act and departed from cybersecurity standards that they are obligated to follow. This was a breach of law and of trust. Tens of millions of Americans depend on the Government to safeguard records that reveal their most private and sensitive affairs.”
Lex Lumina, with our co-counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Democracy Defenders Fund, and The Chandra Law Firm, requested the injunction as part of our ongoing lawsuit against OPM and DOGE on behalf of two labor unions and individual current and former government workers across the country. The lawsuit’s union plaintiffs are the American Federation of Government Employees AFL-CIO and the Association of Administrative Law Judges, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Judicial Council 1 AFL-CIO.
Read the Court’s decision here. Read coverage of the ruling in FedScoop, The Hill, Fox News, FEDweek, and Law360.
