What exactly have Elon Musk and DOGE been up to? A new court ruling could help provide some answers.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan granted a request for expedited discovery in a lawsuit brought by Democratic-led states challenging Musk’s and the Department of Government Efficiency’s authority. The plaintiff states are seeking “to identify DOGE personnel and the parameters of DOGE’s and Musk’s authority — a question central to Plaintiffs’ claims,” Chutkan wrote in an opinion explaining her decision.
If the judge’s name sounds familiar, she also presided over one of Donald Trump’s four criminal cases before he won the 2024 presidential election. In this current civil case, Chutkan emphasized in her ruling that the plaintiffs aren’t seeking information from Trump himself.
The discovery requests “shall be limited to information and materials regarding agencies, employees, contracts, grants, federal funding, legal agreements, databases, or data management systems that involve or engage with Plaintiff States, including entities and institutions operated or funded by Plaintiff States,” Chutkan wrote in her order. She said Musk and DOGE must produce the requested documents and respond to questions within three weeks.
The states wrote in their discovery motion that they want to “confirm what investigative reporting has already indicated”: that Musk and DOGE “are directing actions within federal agencies that have profoundly harmed the States and will continue to harm them.” The states also wrote that the government said Musk “is merely an advisor to the President, with no authority to direct agency action and no role at DOGE. The public record refutes that implausible assertion. But only Defendants possess the documents and information that Plaintiffs need to confirm public reporting and identify which agencies Defendants will target next so Plaintiffs can seek preliminary relief and mitigate further harm.”
Opposing expedited discovery, the government defendants said the plaintiffs sought “extraordinary relief” and material that’s “not relevant to their claims.” As to relevance, Chutkan noted in her ruling that the states want information regarding Musk’s and DOGE’s involvement in “(1) eliminating or reducing the size of federal agencies; (2) terminating or placing federal employees on leave; (3) cancelling, freezing, or pausing federal contracts, grants, or other federal funding; and (4) obtaining access, using, or making changes to federal databases or data management systems.” The judge wrote that evidence regarding the defendants’ elimination of agencies that work with the plaintiff states, termination of employees responsible for managing programs with the states, or cancellation of contracts with the states “is relevant to whether Defendants exceeded their statutory and constitutional authority.” Chutkan had previously rejected the states’ bid for a temporary restraining order against Musk and DOGE. But the latest ruling is a reminder that the suit isn’t over yet. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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