WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Maryland admonished the Trump administration for trying to rush her into lifting restrictions on an Elon Musk team seeking access to the private Social Security Administration information of millions of Americans.

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday gave the judge three hours’ notice that four of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency employees would be granted access to data she’d previously barred unless the judge objected. Two are involved in an “Are You Alive Project” that an agency official said is part of a broader effort to root out fraud and waste.

But during a hearing Thursday that included the agency’s Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek, U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Baltimore refused to immediately allow the employees access and said she wasn’t happy with how government officials were handling the situation.

“I think it’s really not an appropriate deadline,” Hollander said. “Normally, I set the deadline. This is not the way it works.”

Hollander is overseeing a lawsuit claiming Musk’s team violated laws meant to protect Americans’ privacy and safeguard sensitive information. The judge said the unions that sued — and won an injunction from her a week ago — should be allowed to respond to the government’s claim that the employees had a specific need for the data and had received training and background vetting to address privacy concerns.

The DOGE employees, who aren’t named in court papers, want access to Social Security numbers, names and birth and death dates, among other information.

Dudek told the judge he was “very aware of the responsibility” to safeguard Americans’ personal information. He said he was “happy to do whatever it takes to assure the court” that the agency is “really trying to do the right thing by cleaning up our records.”

The exchanges between the judge and Dudek were cordial, even as Hollander expressed frustration with the sequence of events. Hollander said she understood Dudek was eager to move ahead with DOGE’s work, but that she needed to give the other side a chance to be heard.

“I’m not trying to be difficult, but I have a job to do,” she said.

Dudek said that he respected the court and would obey the judge.

Shortly after Hollander released the March 20 order restricting DOGE’s access, Dudek made comments suggesting he interpreted it as covering such a large number of employees with a connection to the Musk-led project that he would have to all but shut down operations. That prompted Hollander to make clear that was not what her ruling said. The Justice Department has appealed the injunction and on Wednesday asked an appellate panel to immediately pause the effect of Hollander’s order.

While the appeal is pending, the government filed the notice Thursday morning saying it had complied with the parts of Hollander’s order laying out circumstances when DOGE-affiliated employees could regain access to information.

Dudek wrote in his declaration that the four DOGE employees at issue are working on three projects where they need non-anonymized data.

The Are You Alive Project involves checking individual entries to see if people receiving benefits are dead or alive. Since the employees may need to make contact with those individuals, anonymizing the information “would make it impracticable,” Dudek wrote.

Another DOGE employee is working on a “Death Data Clean Up Project” to update records based on confirmation that a person has died, Dudek wrote. The fourth employee is exploring ways of detecting benefits fraud and needed personal information to carry out tasks such as “name matching,” Dudek wrote.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs told the judge that they didn’t agree the government had shown why the DOGE employees needed “unbridled” access to databases. Their response is due early next week.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.