Cybersecurity Policy Report, District Judge: IRS Unlawfully Shared 42,695 Taxpayer Addresses With ICE, (Feb 26, 2026)
A case challenging a data-sharing arrangement between the Internal Revenue Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been roiled by disclosures from the Trump administration that a district court judge today said described unlawful and possibly bad-faith conduct.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit criticized the government in an indicative ruling that carries little weight unless the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sends the case back to the district court.
The ruling is merely “indicative” because an earlier decision by Judge Kollar-Kotelly that blocked the IRS-ICE data-sharing arrangement and found that it likely violated federal law was appealed by the Trump administration, removing the district court from the proceedings (CPR, Jan. 22).
The indicative ruling came after the IRS admitted that its disclosures to the district court were mistaken. “Defendants admit that, on August 7, 2025, the IRS disclosed confidential taxpayer addresses to ICE in violation of Section 6103(i)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly noted.
The late disclosure by the IRS led the plaintiffs in the case (Center for Taxpayer Rights, et al., v. Internal Revenue Service, et al., No. 25-cv-00457 (D.C. Cir. Feb. 17, 2025)) to ask Judge Kollar-Kotelly to indicate whether, if she still had jurisdiction over the case, she would “grant Plaintiffs limited, expedited discovery into the information disclosed in Defendants’ Supplemental Declaration.”
Judge Kollar-Kotelly said she would allow discovery if the appeals court agreed. New information in the case indicates that the IRS unlawfully shared 42,695 taxpayer addresses with ICE, she noted. The Internal Revenue Code allows IRS to share taxpayer information with law enforcement agencies under certain circumstances if the requesting agency can provide a name and address.
In this case, however, ICE requested 1.28 million addresses and provided incomplete information to the IRS, the judge said. Some of the requests merely contained a fragment of a ZIP code rather than a complete ZIP code and address, she said.
“A zip code is not an address, and a zip code proxy, as the IRS would define it, might as well be a set of random numbers. For instance, ICE could have submitted a request with an ‘address’ like, ‘Don’t Care 12345,’ or, ‘00000,’ and still received a taxpayer’s address,” she said.
The appeals court hasn’t indicated whether it would send the case back to the district court for additional proceedings. The plaintiffs today filed a notice with the appeals court that includes the indicative ruling and a request for the case to be remanded to the district court.
“The district court has reaffirmed that, if this case were remanded for a limited purpose, the court would allow the parties to supplement the record,” they said. “Unless the Court directs otherwise, Plaintiffs intend to move for a remand to permit the district court to exercise jurisdiction.”
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