U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan found that there are legitimate questions about Musk's authority but said there isn't enough evidence of grave legal harm to justify a temporary restraining order.
The decision came in a lawsuit filed by 14 Democratic states challenging DOGE’s authority to access sensitive government data. The attorneys general argued that Musk is wielding the kind of power that the Constitution says can be held only by those elected or confirmed by the Senate.
The Trump administration has maintained that layoffs are coming from agency heads and asserted that despite his public cheering of the effort, Musk isn't running DOGE's day to day operations himself.
In other DOGE lawsuits, two other judges in Washington have similarly declined to immediately block DOGE from access to agency systems.
