U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander granted a temporary restraining order, preventing Social Security Administration workers from allowing DOGE access to any records containing personally identifiable information.

The current acting commissioner of the SSA, Leland Dudek, and chief information officer Michael Russo are named in the restraining order as defendants.

The U.S. Senate Finance Committee, led by Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, is scheduled to hold a nomination hearing this morning, March 25 at 10a.m. to consider Frank Bisignano to be commissioner of the Social Security Administration. The hearing comes after the SSA’s announcement last week that it is implementing stricter identity-proofing measures and will require Americans to visit a field office or use the internet to sign up for Social Security benefits, as opposed to calling in.

Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote to Bisignano this week asking whether he would support privatizing the SSA and if he would be willing to undo recent changes at the agency, if those changes proved harmful to beneficiaries.

Meanwhile, the judge’s restraining order demands that all SSA DOGE team members and DOGE affiliates disgorge and delete all non-anonymized PII data in their possession, or under their control, obtained from SSA records they have had access to since January 20, 2025.

In addition, all SSA DOGE members are prohibited from installing any software on SSA devices, information systems or systems of record and must remove any software they previously installed since January 20. They are not allowed to access, alter or disclose any SSA computer of software code, according to the judge’s order.

The SSA is allowed to provide members of DOGE access to “discrete, particularized and non-anonymized data” in accordance with the Privacy Act.

“The court is aware of several news reports claiming that Acting Social Security Commissioner Dudek believes that virtually all employees of SSA fall within the scope of the order, including his ‘IT Staff’ and his ‘anti-fraud team,’” Hollander wrote in a letter to the lawyers involved in the case. “And, according to the news reports, Mr. Dudek apparently believes he is required to terminate their access to SSA’s IT systems, in order to comply with the order. Such assertions about the scope of the Order are inaccurate.”

Hollander clarified that employees of the SSA who are not involved with the DOGE team are not subject to the order.

Hollander also required the SSA defendants to file a status report documenting all the actions they have taken to comply with the restraining order on or before Monday, March 24.

According to the restraining order, the court may require further status reports which may require members of the SSA and DOGE to provide further detail about their compliance activities.

The restraining order is set to expire 14 days after entry unless the court orders otherwise.