DOGE must comply with expedited request to release records, judge rules

The Department of Government Efficiency’s increasingly vast power across the government likely makes it subject to U.S. records law, a federal judge said Monday in a ruling that ordered the Elon Musk-led group to begin processing requests on an expedited timeline.

In a 37-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper concluded that DOGE — the rebranded U.S. Digital Service — “is likely exercising substantial independent authority much greater than” other components within the Executive Office of the President that are covered by the Freedom of Information Act, subjecting it to the same rules.

Cooper noted as examples that the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Council on Environmental Quality are both covered by FOIA due to the substantial independent authority they wield when it comes to the evaluation of federal programs.

“Based on its actions so far,” Cooper wrote, “USDS appears to have the power not just to evaluate federal programs, but to drastically reshape and even eliminate them wholesale.”

The judge’s ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which submitted FOIA requests to the Office of Management and Budget and DOGE tied to their roles in the Trump administration’s mass firings of federal workers. 

According to CREW, OMB agreed to respond to the FOIA requests and process them on an expedited basis, while DOGE refused, saying it is not an “agency” that is subject to federal records law. 

But Cooper wrote that DOGE bears the hallmarks of an agency, making it likely that it is subject to FOIA. The judge cited three factors in that decision: executive orders that “appear to endow USDS with substantial authority independent of the President,” statements from Musk and President Donald Trump highlighting that authority, and DOGE actions to date that demonstrate that authority over “vast swaths of the federal government.”

Cooper also ruled favorably on CREW’s request for expedited processing of its FOIA, finding that the watchdog is likely entitled to a sped-up timeline due to urgency and widespread public interest. 

“The USDS Request easily qualifies for expedited treatment under either test,” Cooper wrote, noting the watchdog’s role in disseminating information about government activity quickly and the broad media interest in DOGE, which “suggests a matter of urgency.”

The judge noted that DOGE itself has operated “remarkably swiftly” since its creation via a day-one Trump executive order, pointing specifically to its drastic federal workforce and budget cuts, the shuttering of a federal agency and the cancellation of hundreds of government contracts.

“USDS appears able to do this in part because of its access to many agency’s IT systems, which help the department carry out its objectives at warp speed,” Cooper wrote. “But the rapid pace of USDS’s actions, in turn, requires the quick release of information about its structure and activities. That is especially so given the secrecy with which USDS has operated.”