Judge Grants Preliminary Injunction Limiting Treasury Access To Treasury’s Payment Systems
“The Court is providing Defendants with an opportunity to promptly cure the procedural defects relating to the protection of sensitive and confidential information that the Court has identified in this Opinion. Should Defendants do so, the Court will determine whether termination or modification of the preliminary injunction is warranted.”
We previously covered the ridiculous 1 a.m. Saturday morning ex parte TRO granted by an emergency duty judge in the Southern District of New York which, by its plain terms, barred political leadership of the Treasury Department, including the Secretary of Treasury, from accessing Treasury payment systems based on hysterical hype. Judge Issues Emergency Order Halting DOGE Access To Treasury Payment Systems (February 8, 2025).
Whatever the ultimate merits, depriving the Secretary of Treasury of the ability to run the Department of Treasury as he deems proper is not something that should have been decided this way, even temporarily. I understand that litigants play these games, but it’s a bad look that damages faith in the judiciary when a court allows it.
The short version of the complaint and claims is that Secretary Bessent violated various procedural requirements and that there is a threat that sensitive private information could be exposed. Considering that the Chinese government thoroughly hacked the Treasury computer systems under Biden, it’s odd that the mere possibility that DOGE might mishandle the information required a Friday night court intervention. I think there are serious ‘standing’ issues with the states bringing the case as well as the harm being speculative.
The judge permanently assigned to the case, Judge Jeanette Vargas, scaled back the TRO somewhat after an emergency motion to dissolve the TRO:
- Trump Admin Moves To Dissolve “Impermissible and Anti-Constitutional” Weekend TRO Against Treasury (February 10)
- Court Partially Modifies Ex Parte Treasury TRO – Only Senior Officials Restored To Access (February 11)
Even that scaled back TRO was not warranted and represents yet another example of the federal district courts usurping Executive Branch authority, in this case as to what constitutes adequate security measures and how best to run the department. There never was any clear legal violation much less one that the states would have standing upon which to sue, and the alleged irreparable harm — leaking private information– was speculative.
Judge Vargas took time in coming to her ruling on the request for a longer-term preliminary injunction, and we lost track of the case as dozens of other lawsuits seekiing to freeze the executive branch were filed and resulted in a mixed bag of ruling for and against the Trump administration.
In her Order Granting the preliminary injuction, Judge Vargas effectively continued the terms of her prior TRO (which scaled back the initial ex parte emergency TRO)
For the reasons stated herein, Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction is GRANTED. The preliminary injunction substantially tracks the terms of the temporary restraining order (“TRO”) that is presently in place, in that it bars the Treasury Department from granting access to any member of the DOGE team within the Treasury Department to any payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees. But Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that they are entitled to the broad and sweeping relief they seek, which would far exceed the scope of the present TRO to prohibit members of the DOGE team from developing automated (or even manual) processes to halt payments coming through Treasury Department payment systems. The remedy in this case must be narrowly tailored to redress the specific harm asserted by the Plaintiffs: the threatened disclosure of the States’ sensitive bank information contained in the Treasury Department’s payment systems. Plaintiffs’ proposed preliminary injunction order is anything but narrow.
Additionally, the duration of the preliminary injunction also has the potential to be limited in scope. The Court is providing Defendants with an opportunity to promptly cure the procedural defects relating to the protection of sensitive and confidential information that the Court has identified in this Opinion. Should Defendants do so, the Court will determine whether termination or modification of the preliminary injunction is warranted.
You can read the full Order and reasoning, which rejected almost all of the legal arguments from the states but rested primarily on alleged violations of the Administrative Procedures Act because the DOGE access was too rapid and unstructured:
The process by which the Treasury DOGE Team was appointed, brought on board, and provided with access to BFS payment systems could have been implemented in a measured, reasonable, and thoughtful way. To date, based on the record currently before the Court, it does not appear that this has been the case….
Here, Plaintiffs sufficiently allege irreparable harm from the risk of “expanded access” to the BFS payment systems that will possibly compromise the systems to become “far more vulnerable to hacking or activities that render the information corrupted or compromised.” Pls. Br. at 13. The Court finds that there is a “substantial risk of future harm” where the data access protocols in place do not satisfactorily vet the employees with access and rigorously train them in data security measures….
Defendants’ interest in the modernization and increased efficiency in Treasury payment systems is not undercut by the relief the Court is Ordering. Indeed, taking the time to adequately mitigate potential security concerns and properly onboard members to engage in this work outweighs the Defendants’ immediate need to access and redevelop Treasury systems. Without addressing these issues, the potential consequences of a cybersecurity breach could be catastrophic.
It is undisputed that the BFS payment systems are critical to the financial infrastructure of the nation. Moreover, those systems contain sensitive PII and financial data regarding millions of American citizens. The public interest is plainly served by requiring the Treasury Department to ensure, to the maximum extent possible, the security of these systems and the information contained therein.
It’s ridiculous that a federal judge is opining on security protocols when the security experts employed by Treasury have certified to the security measures they have in place. Judge Vargas appears to recognize the weak foundation of her ruling by giving the government a chance to cure, but that is not enough of a remedy for an executive branch department which has had its own constitutional power restricted.
I hope the government seeks expedited appellate review.
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Comments
Black robed activists. Vile and repugnant. I loathe them more every day.
As with his first term, every move Trump makes will be challenged in any and all ways possible.
I still think that the Trump Administration should assert Executive Privledge, tell them to pound sand, and see what happens. That would immediately bring this tonto a standoff.
Sounds almost like a political question. You know, those conflicts between co-equal branches of government that SCOTUS has said courts should stay out of.
The Trump WH should probably take another bite or two at the apple in seeking immediate appellate review…..and if the Judiciary is foolish enough to persist in seeking to unconstitutionally interfere with/refuse to defer to wholly internal Executive Branch operations…so be it.
Invoke reciprocal actions. Start with some attention getters; revoke all Security clearance held by Judiciary and reassign every US Marshall to ICE. End all cooperation with the Judicial Branch. Escalate as needed to ensure the Judiciary is paying attention….perhaps by telling the Judiciary that Executive Branch has rewritten the rules of Federal Procedure and the judicial Branch is required to follow them….after all if the Judiciary can get into the weeds of directing Executive Branch operations then as a co equal branch the Executive can do the same for the Judiciary. Maybe something that ridiculous would be the sharp stick the Judiciary needs to put their actions into context and see how asinine their orders are. Maybe refer them to what Hamilton had to say about the relative power of the Judiciary.
Moving the USM’s to ICE can’t be done. Not only do they provide security to the judiciary, they do transportation for in custody subjects to their court hearings. Another responsibility they have is to hunt fugitives. They are very good at that.
Of course it can be done the US Marshals are under DoJ and work for the.AG. While many of.their duties involve close.cooperation with the Judicial Branch they ain’t under the Judiciary. Detailing them to chasing folks in AZ border areas would disrupt the operations of the Judiciary but that’s the point. There are all sorts of joint interagency task forces created all the time, this would simply be a much larger version.
These activist judges are doing a great job of destroying public confidence in the judiciary.
TY Q, but I think that horse left the barn a while back. What they are doing is just destroying hope that there will be some kind of restitution of judicial propriety.
they don’t care whether or nor you and I have confidence in the system,..they only care that they can do whatever they desire and nobody can or will deter them,..we have Federal judges defying SCOTUS opinions with impunity
Simply tells the judges that they made their ruling, now try to enforce it.
The Constitution Crisis is being caused by the judicial branch.
Just tell them to fuck off.
The only remedy? Try to impeach the president.
Then the Republicans will have to drop their dicks and stop mutually masturbating each other and do their jobs.
This is a fucking shit show that needs to be stopped.
The Constitution Crisis is being caused by the judicial branch.
Partly. It’s being caused by the Deep State. But our judiciary is part of the Deep State. It comes from their lifelong appointments, their lack of being elected, and the idea that they are “experts” in the law. They are part of the un-elected morass of “expertism” that has taken root in our country and needs to be burned out.
What the hell does judge Vargas know about data security. In a reasonable world she would be given a test to see if she is even qualified to sit in judgment or whether she’s a near retard who is opining on an issue that she has no clue about.
Give this judge a test about data security to be checked and graded in full public view. No one seems to care enough to have listed it, but as far as I can see She got a B.A. in Political Science (LOL). This chick probably never took a math course in her life and wouldn’t be able to tell data security from a cheese danish.
I am really sick of these moron judges making decisions about things they have no knowledge of, whatsoever.
This needs to proceed to a full “constitutional crisis”.
What rule of law controls our republic? The Constitution, or unelected inferior court justices?
SCOTUS, step up and follow the Constitution you are sworn to uphold.
And the odds of Chief Coward…oops, “Justice” Roberts actually stepping up to his responsibility to the Constitution are exactly nil.
Heck, he might not get invited to the nice Georgetown cocktail parties anymore if he did that.
I don’t recall if it was this case or one of the others but the Supreme Court refused to take it. The reasoning was that the Supreme Court is not the place to appeal a TRO. They did say the TRO was supposed to expire 2/26 and if it was extended they would reconsider because they are the place to go to appeal a restraining order and you can’t just keep extending a TRO so that it is not appealable.
Biden judge giving Democrat insurrectionists what they want and depriving the administration of the ability to control its own operations.
If I’m understanding this article correctly the temporary 2 week freeze has now been replaced by an indefinite freeze unless the government can show cause for why this is unnecessary, except the ruling judge has already ignored security experts certifying the details of what’s in place.
Instead she is demanding rigorous (time consuming) vetting of (DOGE) employees with access and rigorous (time consuming) training in data security measures. What will it take to satisfy this judge? Democrats in the White House perhaps?
rigorous (time consuming) training in data security measures
While I hate the low-security methodologies of a LOT of programmers, I’m betting these guys could all get certified as Security+ in a matter of days. I guarantee they also already had the training for PII and CUI. And everyone else involved has had to take it annually, as gov’t employees with access.
I think Trump is making quite a number of moves that he is sure will allow a case to come before SCOTUS settling who has control of the Executive Branch once and for all.
The case for the President controlling the executive branch was settled last summer. In the immunity decision was a statement that the President had “absolute” control over the executive branch. These judges are defying the Supreme Court’s ruling. Justice Robert’s knows it. The ruling was 8-1 if I remember correctly. Robert’s is shying away from taking a gavel to the heads of these lower court judges. You can bet that Alito and Thomas are quietly trying to stiffen Robert’s spine on this issue.
LOL, trying to stiffen Robert’s spine is akin to trying to stiffen a well cooked linguini
There is a war raging inside the Supreme Court even as we speak. All of them are appalled at the speed with which Trump is acting. The
Liberals on the court hate what he is doing and have never given a damn about the constitution. The true conservatives are frightened but follow the law. However ROBERTS. He will be reluctant and will not want to give up any of the power of the court to shape the society. He thought ObamaCare a good thing for the country and so found a way to make it happen. I fear he will want to keep the power to interfere at the lower court with policies he personally doesn’t like.
He most definitely never said it was a good idea. But he did say that Congress had the power to make this kind of decision, whether good or bad.
There are already rules and policies regarding the handling of PII. If those rules are being violated, I have no problem with victims suing, but it seems there point of view is that without prior restraint something might happen.
There is no evidence of any abuse or leaking of PII. There is less probability of it being leaked with DOGE looking at it than when China had full access to the systems last year.
That something “might” happen is too hypothetical to establish standing. The case should be dismissed on that basis alone. It really gets into a crazy, unconstitutional town by using the APA to restrict executive oversight by the president. The APA doesn’t apply to the president; there is no final agency action within the meaning of the APA that even exists here; and, moreover, there never could be consistent with the constitution.
Never ceases to amaze me how comfortable the redhat crowd is with dictatorship. Anything to keep that white privelege intact. Hey- immigrants are poisoning our blood, right? SMH
Amazing that people as stupid as you can post on the Internet.
Lookout Whitey, MAGA Gonna Get Yo Mama.
Well , his mom lets him use the internet if he cleans his room.
What’s amazing to me is how comfortable with drinking the Kool-Aid the Kommie Kids are:
“Dictatorship” is now defined as following the Constitution of the United States.
“White privelege” [sic] is now defined as having people of descent from a huge variety of backgrounds and ethnicities as Cabinet heads. “White privilege” [note how you actually spell it, you illiterate twit] is also defined as having massive support from every race and ethnicity in the country, including the former Democrat-plantation slaves who have escaped your grasp.
“Immigrants poisoning our blood” is now defined as having immigrants responsible for trying to rein in the rampant bureaucratic corruption that has bankrupted our nation.
I’m sorry to everyone else; I know I shouldn’t feed the feral trolls but he managed to pack multiple lies into a two-sentence post.
Well transvestite1156, better to have Trump dictatorship than a Biden, Schumer, Pelosi, leftist dictatorship. Or a dictatorship of unelected leftist judges. Or a leftist dictatorship selected by the likes of you.
I am all good with that.
Can you type and breathe at the same time or do you have to hold your breath between keystrokes. You are, by far, the most ignorant poster using this site.
We are not comfortable with dictatorships. Which is why we are appalled about this judge’s action, substituting her opinion for the elected President’s.
Right… actually
LOL! The “””dictatorship””” of Article 2 if the US Constitution.
The obvious answer to this is to have a “malfunction” in Treasury’s system. Then, of course, you can’t fix it because you’re not allowed to touch the systems.
Either ignore the order, because the judge is overstepping his authority, or simply stop paying anything from Treasury and refer to the order as the reason.
Ahhh, the beloved Malicious Compliance. A mainstay of the left that should be used frequently from the right.
Sorry everyone. A judge said we can’t touch the systems, so no checks this week. Including payroll checks to judges.
Genuinely the easiest way to stop overspending and forestall insolvency.
Stop the servers. It’s for security reasons. (You can’t tell if they’re being hacked if you can’t access them.)
They are burning docs as fast as they can.
The more they resist, the harder I hope the fire them all.
Well the docs are electronic and if I had to make a bet on who would win the battle of recovering or not recovering the information my money would be on DOGE. The few people in government who might have the ability to hide stuff from those guys are hopefully working for whatever agency is in charge of keeping foreign governments from wrecking our power grid and stuff.
What’s all this about “damage” and “potential damage”? If the POTUS takes an executive action that results in “damage” to anyone, that’s a political problem answered at the next election by the voters. The POTUS Is completely immune from a suit of any kind when he exercises his lawful authority.
The court’s only concern should be “Is the act within the POTUS’ authority under Article II?” If it is, then nobody has standing to stop him for any reason, real or imagined. This was settled when the Constitution was ratified, the States agreeing at the time to invest the POTUS with the executive authority of the United States.
Imagine trying to stop a POTUS from issuing a pardon. The POTUS is elected to use his own judgment when making decisions concerning pardons. Nobody else has this authority, and nobody is authorized to interfere with it because the POTUS shares the authority with no one. Executive authority is the same. It belongs to the POTUS and is shared with nobody.
What?
There’s no Milhouse post tsk-tsking at us about how what the judge did is right and proper?
Did someone forget to unlock the door to Hell’s sewer to let him out?
Pull the plug on the servers. If Treasury can’t access it, then no one should be able to. For security reasons.
“Hello, Amazon. We need you to terminate access by all concerned personnel except me, and I want you to lock my account. Be prepared to terminate our cloud contract on a moment’s notice.”