Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) can’t seem to avoid mounting legal woes.
This time, a federal judge decided on Tuesday that a lawsuit accusing DOGE and Musk of acting beyond their legal authority can move forward.
President Donald Trump first established DOGE in an executive order on the first day of his second term. The original order said DOGE would be a temporary agency set to terminate in July 2026. Its primary function would be to modernize “Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” However, future executive orders expanded the agency’s role. Musk co-led DOGE for about five months.
Not long after, in March 2025, a group of nonprofits, including the Japanese American Citizens League, the Sierra Club, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, sued DOGE and Musk for allegedly acting beyond their authority by cutting federal funding, dismantling agencies, and firing federal workers. The case was later consolidated with a similar lawsuit brought by a group of states led by New Mexico.
In today’s ruling on a motion to dismiss the case filed by the defendants, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan allowed claims that DOGE took action despite lacking lawful authority and that Musk violated the Appointments Clause by “wielding the power of a principal officer without having received Senate confirmation” to move forward.
The judge, however, did dismiss claims that the agency violated the separation of powers by refusing to spend money already appropriated by Congress, as well as claims that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
The ruling comes as Musk and his companies face a growing slate of lawsuits. These include one case accusing Musk of violating securities law by making misleading public statements to push Twitter’s stock price down before he ultimately bought the social media platform. Another lawsuit against Tesla claims the company is negligent for keeping Musk as its CEO.
DOGE itself has also been in the news recently. On Monday, a judge ruled that now-viral deposition videos of former DOGE employees can remain online after the government asked for them to be taken down over alleged harassment concerns. The videos are part of a separate lawsuit brought by scholarly groups against the National Endowment for the Humanities, seeking to restore grant cuts carried out by DOGE.
The DOGE website currently claims that it has generated $215 billion in savings. But in one of the most viral deposition videos, a former DOGE staffer said he did not regret that his actions could have caused people to lose their income because reducing the federal deficit was more important.
When asked a follow-up on whether DOGE reduced the federal deficit, he responded, “No, we didn’t.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo.
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