- Clara Brownstein | Senior Staff
- Feb 13, 2025 (DailyCal.org)
A United States federal judge has ordered the Department of Education to temporarily halt the sharing of students’ personal information with the newly-established Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, on Tuesday.
The temporary restraining order, or TRO, will last through Monday after the University of California student government filed a federal complaint against the Department of Education, or DOE, last week.
Student personal and financial information can be found in various DOE databases that house the information of over 42 million Americans. The shared data could include student social security numbers as well as financial, contact and family information, according to the original complaint filed Feb. 7.
U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss approved the agreement, and will hear arguments regarding the TRO on Friday. In the meantime, DOGE staffers may not access any of the 13 DOE databases, which includes the National Student Loan Data System.
DOGE is using artificial intelligence to analyze the information and probe the agency’s spending, as first reported by The Washington Post last week.
The University of California Student Association, or UCSA, lawsuit alleges that in sharing students’ information, the DOE is violating multiple federal laws, including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Internal Revenue Code.
The 1974 law prohibits federal agencies from disclosing personal records without the individual’s written consent. The Internal Revenue Code requires personal information relating to taxes to be kept “confidential.”
“(The DOE) secretly decided to allow individuals with no role in the federal student aid program to root around millions of students’ sensitive records,” UCSA’s motion stated.
The suit calls the “intrusion” into students’ private information “enormous and unprecedented,” also noting that students do not know what DOGE can or will do with the information.
In the lawsuit the UCSA, which has over 230,000 members across the UC, noted that 70% of their members receive federal financial aid, for which they provide the DOE with their personal information.
“(The decision to share students’ information) has resulted in the infringement of Plaintiff’s members’ constitutional and statutory privacy rights, has caused them significant emotional distress, and puts them at greater risk of identity theft,” the motion states. “These harms are happening right now, because individuals associated with DOGE are already in (the DOE’s) system and, reportedly, using Plaintiff’s members’ data.”
The defendants have until the end of today to file a response to the UCSA’s TRO, before a hearing currently scheduled for Feb. 14.
