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- A judge ruled that federal workers associated with the White House DOGE office can be subpoenaed in a current lawsuit.
- The lawsuit filed by AFL-CIO seeks information on how the DOGE office is handling sensitive data.
- US District Judge John Bates highlighted DOGE’s “unclear” structure and authority as keys to the legal decision.
A federal judge on Thursday granted a motion to require federal workers tied to the White House DOGE office to testify under oath.
The decision came in a lawsuit from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, one of the country’s largest trade unions. The group sued the DOGE office and the Department of Labor on February 5 over access to sensitive personal data.
The ruling granted the plaintiffs’ request to conduct four depositions, one each with the agencies named in the lawsuit — the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — and the United States DOGE Service. However, it also said the depositions would be capped at “eight hours in the aggregate.”
The judge wrote that “understandably, defendants argue most strongly against” the depositions. But he said the depositions being limited to specific topics and in length meant they did not pose too high a burden.
The topics that can be discussed in the depositions include how access to systems at each agency changed after the DOGE office was created, the role of DOGE office employees at the agencies, and how those employees are using sensitive systems at the agencies.
It’s unclear which specific Trump administration officials would be asked to sit for the depositions.
The lawsuit is one of more than 85 lawsuits challenging the scope of the DOGE office’s authority.
AFL-CIO filed a motion for expedited discovery, citing limited information about the DOGE office’s current operation. Washington, DC, District Judge John Bates wrote in the ruling that the DOGE office’s “structure” and “scope of authority” are “not only unclear on the current record but also critical” to decide how the law applies to the agency.
Bates wrote that it would be “strange to permit defendants to submit evidence that addresses critical factual issues and proceed to rule on a preliminary injunction motion without permitting plaintiffs to explore those factual issues through very limited discovery.”
The White House, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
