A federal judge in Washington gave President Trump a victory for now when she declined on Tuesday to bar Elon Musk and his associates from ordering mass firings or having access to data at seven federal agencies.
The judge, Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court, wrote that a coalition of 14 state attorneys general could not provide specific examples of how Mr. Musk’s team’s efforts would cause imminent or irreparable harm to the states or their residents.
“The court is aware that DOGE’s unpredictable actions have resulted in considerable uncertainty and confusion for plaintiffs and many of their agencies and residents,” Judge Chutkan wrote, referring to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is tasked with carrying out Mr. Musk’s vision. But the mere possibility that “defendants may take actions that irreparably harm plaintiffs” was not enough to grant emergency relief, she said.
Judge Chutkan nonetheless appeared to suggest that the lawsuit had a strong chance of succeeding with the benefit of additional evidence, which could be introduced later as litigation continues.
“Plaintiffs legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight,” she wrote.
The ruling by Judge Chutkan reflected the atmosphere of confusion surrounding the purpose and goals of Mr. Musk’s team, which judges in a number of court cases have repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked government lawyers to clarify.
It also reflected what Judge Chutkan described as the considerable uncertainty about what future cuts and layoffs could result from Mr. Musk’s effort to shrink the federal work force, which has resulted in the termination of hundreds of federal contracts and thousands of workers in recent weeks.
“The court can’t act based on media reports,” she said in a hearing on Monday. “We can’t do that.”
The coalition of 14 states had argued in the case that Mr. Musk was essentially informing his process on the fly, steering decisions about how to reshape federal agencies based on the data his team was actively extracting.
“The way in which DOGE and Mr. Musk have identified how to make cuts is through use and analysis of the agency data,” Anjana Samant, a deputy counsel at the New Mexico Department of Justice, said on Monday. “I don’t see how defendants can dispute that.”
The states had sought a temporary restraining order to prevent Elon Musk or anyone on his efficiency team from combing through data at seven agencies: the Office of Personnel Management and the Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Energy, Transportation and Commerce Departments. It also sought to prevent Mr. Musk’s operatives from “terminating, furloughing, or otherwise placing on involuntary leave” any employees who work at those agencies.
The Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a department but a small team housed within the executive office of the president, regularly spotlights obscure grants and contracts on its website as examples of runaway spending that President Trump has given a greenlight to slash. But in the process, it has also pushed billions of dollars in cuts without explanation, and spurred personnel changes, including the firing or suspension of thousands of workers.
The coalition of states suing described the effect of those cuts in a motion as “a classic pocketbook injury,” given the federal funding states could lose as Mr. Musk’s team continues to make changes.
In the hearing on Monday, Judge Chutkan appeared to doubt whether it was possible to determine how that impact could be measured, absent clearer evidence about what the Musk team is doing.
She pressed Ms. Samant to identify cases of “imminent harm,” asking for specific examples of critical programs that the Musk team may have already targeted like a “wrecking ball,” which would justify such a sweeping emergency injunction.
Ms. Samant pointed specifically to reporting last week that the Education Department had moved to slash hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that fund education research that teachers and academics in New Mexico and other plaintiff states depend on. She also pointed to the impact of staff reductions at the Energy Department last week, which she said put residents of her state in danger, given the nuclear waste disposal facilities that the department oversees there.
While several judges have already considered more limited restraining orders halting Musk team operations within individual agencies, the case before Judge Chutkan is unique in its focus on the Constitution’s appointments clause, which specifies which officials can be appointed by the executive branch without the consent of the Senate. The states argued in their lawsuit that Mr. Trump had violated the clause by granting broad powers to Mr. Musk.
On Monday, Ms. Samant stressed that the lawsuit was squarely focused on Mr. Musk and the sweeping authority he had claimed over federal agency heads, not any changes that agencies decide to make on their own.
“Mr. Musk is not a principal officer of the United States within the meaning of the appointments clause of the Constitution; he occupies a role the president made up, not one Congress created,” the attorneys general wrote in a motion.
The suit was filed by the attorneys general in New Mexico, Arizona, Michigan, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Vermont.
Attorneys for the government on Monday disputed the notion that Mr. Musk had been given any extraordinary control or had personally influenced any decisions.
They sought to reinforce that claim with a declaration from Joshua Fisher, the director of the White House’s Office of Administration, filed on Monday. Although Mr. Musk has taken a leading role in the federal downsizing efforts, Mr. Fisher stated that he has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions” and is not the legal head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Justice Department attorneys also argued that some of the states who joined the lawsuit had failed to show that they had been harmed by anything Mr. Musk had done so far.
“An appointment clause claim is entirely about somebody occupying an office and using the trappings of that office to wield sovereign power,” Harry Graver, an attorney for the Justice Department, said. “Nowhere have my friends offered a shred of anything, nor could they, to show that Elon Musk has any formal or actual authority to make any government decision himself.”
