A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing information on millions of Americans through the Social Security Administration (SSA). 

The ruling comes as the department has been conducting audits at multiple government agencies over the past month, in an effort to restructure the federal government and weed out fraud. But the effort at the SSA has been met with a lawsuit, claiming DOGE's access flouts privacy laws and the agency’s own rules and regulations.  

U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander ordered DOGE to delete all personally identifiable information it has on Americans and blocked the advisory group from accessing the SSA’s systems containing the data, per The Hill.

“The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” Hollander wrote in her 137-page opinion. “It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack.”

Hollander also accused DOGE of not explaining why it needed the information, and slammed the group's method in obtaining the information as "tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer." 

The records contain information on Americans' Social Security numbers, medical and mental health records, bank data and earnings history. 

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.