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Press Release:

AG Tong Sues to Block DOGE Access to Con­fi­den­tial Records

Preceding Event:

On Feb. 2, 2025, the Trea­sury Depart­ment began allow­ing “spe­cial gov­ern­ment employ­ees” includ­ing Elon Musk and his Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy mem­bers, to access the cen­tral pay­ment sys­tem oper­at­ed by the Bureau of Fis­cal Ser­vices. Nor­mal­ly, this was lim­it­ed to a select few career civ­il ser­vice mem­bers with exten­sive train­ing and vet­ting.

“Until sev­er­al days ago, con­sis­tent with laws and reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the col­lec­tion, stor­age, han­dling, and dis­clo­sure of PII (per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion), only a lim­it­ed num­ber of career civ­il ser­vants employed at BFS with appro­pri­ate secu­ri­ty clear­ance had access to the BFS pay­ment sys­tems – access nec­es­sary for them to per­form their job func­tion of ensur­ing BFS oper­ates secure­ly as intend­ed when dis­burs­ing the fed­er­al dol­lars appro­pri­at­ed by Con­gress to the States and their res­i­dents,” accord­ing to the law­suit

General Overview:

Accord­ing to the press release from Feb. 7, 2025, “Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong today joined a coali­tion of 19 attor­neys gen­er­al suing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, the U.S. Trea­sury and Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Scott Bessent to stop the unau­tho­rized dis­clo­sure of Amer­i­cans’ pri­vate infor­ma­tion and sen­si­tive data.”

The law­suit assert­ed that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion ille­gal­ly pro­vid­ed Elon Musk and the Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy (DOGE) unau­tho­rized access to the Trea­sury Department’s cen­tral pay­ment sys­tem, and there­fore to Amer­i­cans’ most sen­si­tive per­son­al infor­ma­tion, includ­ing bank account details and Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers. This expand­ed access could allow Musk and his team to block fed­er­al funds to states and pro­grams pro­vid­ing health care, child­care and oth­er crit­i­cal ser­vices.

With this law­suit, the coali­tion of attor­neys gen­er­al sought to stop the Trump administration’s new pol­i­cy that ille­gal­ly grants DOGE, Musk, and oth­ers access to Amer­i­cans’ con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion and the U.S. Treasury’s pay­ment sys­tems.

Tong assert­ed this pol­i­cy vio­lates the law and jeop­ar­dizes Amer­i­cans’ most sen­si­tive per­son­al infor­ma­tion.

Connecticut Nexus:

Accord­ing to the law­suit, “In the aggre­gate, Con­necti­cut res­i­dents receive approx­i­mate­ly $656,760,797 in vet­er­ans’ ben­e­fits annu­al­ly. In SFY 2024, the State of Con­necti­cut received $6,868,967,920 in fed­er­al fund­ing for Med­ic­aid; $1,560,395 under the Edward Byrne JAG pro­gram; $1,221,252,405 in fed­er­al grants for edu­ca­tion; $28,705,050 in Title IV‑E Fos­ter Care pay­ments; $54,702,152 in Title IV‑E Adop­tion Assis­tance pay­ments; and $5,734,375 in Title IV‑E Sub­si­dized Guardian pay­ment.” All of this mon­ey may be jeop­ar­dized if Musk and DOGE have access to the BFS sys­tems.

Date of filing:

Feb. 7, 2025

Case #:

1:25-cv-01144

Case title:

State of New York et al v. Trump et al.

Plaintiffs: 19 States

• STATE OF NEW YORK;
• STATE OF ARIZONA,
• STATE OF CALIFORNIA,
• STATE OF COLORADO,
• STATE OF CONNECTICUT,
• STATE OF DELAWARE,
• STATE OF HAWAII,
• STATE OF ILLINOIS,
• STATE OF MAINE,
• STATE OF MARYLAND,
• COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS,
• STATE OF MINNESOTA,
• STATE OF NEVADA,
• STATE OF NEW JERSEY,
• STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA,
• STATE OF OREGON,
• STATE OF RHODE ISLAND,
• STATE OF VERMONT,
• STATE OF WISCONSIN

Defendants:

• DONALD J. TRUMP, in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as pres­i­dent of the unit­ed states;
• U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY;
• SCOTT BESSENT, in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as sec­re­tary of the U.S. Depart­ment of Trea­sury

Court:

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

Status as of Dec. 1, 2025:

OPEN
Last fil­ing: Nov. 26, 2025

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