Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LITIGATION NEWS, TRENDS—Watchdog sues agencies over FOIA delays concerning DOGE records, (Jun 9, 2025)

By Shashi Kant, BALLB, LLM

CREW has filed a new complaint against four agencies, claiming FOIA stonewall on the Department of Government Efficiency related records, seeking court-ordered disclosures.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a new complaint against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Department of Education (ED), the Social Security Administration (SSA), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), contending that each violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by failing to process or even timely acknowledge identical requests for records about the White House created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia asks the court to order the four agencies to “immediately begin searching for, processing, and disclosing all non-exempt records responsive to CREW’s requests.”

The lawsuit’s factual backdrop begins in November 2024, when then-President-elect Trump announced that entrepreneur Elon Musk and investor Vivek Ramaswamy would co-lead a new initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency. According to the complaint, the President described DOGE’s charge as “dismantl[ing] Government Bureaucracy, slash[ing] excess regulations, cut[ting] wasteful expenditures, and restructure[ing] Federal Agencies.” Within hours of inauguration, an executive order placed DOGE inside the executive office of the President, authorized it to embed appointees throughout the executive branch, and instructed every department to coordinate reform efforts with DOGE.

Between January and March 2025, the President issued a series of follow-on orders asking agencies to install “DOGE Teams,” review all regulations, and develop workforce-optimization and cost-efficiency plans subject to DOGE oversight. The complaint maintains that DOGE representatives “embedded themselves in federal departments and agencies and gained access to an array of sensitive governmental and personal information,” including at the Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and the departments of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services. CREW asserts that the office’s expansive reach and rapid pace make transparency “of utmost urgency.”

Alleged impact on the four defendant agencies. At the CFPB, CREW alleges that the Office of Management and Budget directed the CFPB’s headquarters to Close and told the Bureau’s employees to cease work. At the same time, DOGE “took credit for cancellations of agency contracts and developed plans to terminate approximately 1,200 employees.” Within the Department of Education, the filing says, DOGE affiliates obtained access to sensitive student-loan data systems and scrutinized service-provider contracts with an eye toward termination. The Social Security Administration, for its part, reportedly granted DOGE officials “read” access to its Enterprise Data Warehouse, which stores wage, tax, and bank-account details for millions of beneficiaries; a federal judge subsequently barred further access after calling the effort a “fishing expedition.” At the Department of Veterans Affairs, CREW recounts that DOGE supplied a list of 875 contracts slated for cancellation and “was involved in mass firings at the agency.” CREW argues that these actions, taken together, illustrate a “breakneck dismantling of swaths of the federal government” that has proceeded without congressional approval or standard notice-and-comment safeguards.

The FOIA requests. To document DOGE’s reach, CREW submitted identical FOIA requests on Dec. 19, 2024, to each of the four agencies. The watchdog sought eight broad categories of records dating from Nov. 5, 2024, onward, including all communications between agency personnel and Musk, Ramaswamy, five named associates, or anyone purporting to act on DOGE’s behalf. It also asked for any internal records referencing DOGE or related terms such as “Government Efficiency Commission” or “DOGE Caucus,” as well as correspondence with Senator Joni Ernst and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene concerning agency structure, staffing, spending, or efficiency. CREW requested a waiver of all fees, identified itself as a news-media requestor, and asked each agency to institute litigation-hold preservation measures to guard against record destruction.

Requests for expedited processing. On Jan. 31, 2025, after receiving little or no response, CREW re-filed the same requests and formally sought expedited processing on the ground that there was an “urgency to inform the public about an actual or alleged Federal Government activity.” Under FOIA, agencies must rule on such requests within ten calendar days. CREW contends that none of the agencies met the deadline: some denied the request well past the statutory window, while others did not address it at all.

Agencies’ responses, according to the complaint. CREW describes divergent but, in its view, uniformly inadequate responses. The CFPB acknowledged receipt, invoked a ten-day extension because multiple offices needed to be consulted, and later agreed to treat CREW as a media requestor, yet it “held in abeyance” the fee-waiver determination and provided no further communication after January 31. The Education Department assigned several tracking numbers but repeatedly asserted that the request did not “reasonably describe” the records sought, and on March 7, denied expedited processing for lack of “compelling need.” The Social Security Administration assigned a tracking number on the day the request arrived and then, according to the suit, took no additional action. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) likewise assigned a number but asked CREW multiple times to narrow the scope. After a video conference on May 15, the parties remained at an impasse, and the VA still had not ruled on expedited processing when the complaint was filed. In each instance, more than twenty working days elapsed without a final determination, allowing CREW to treat administrative remedies as exhausted under the applicable law.

Claims for relief. CREW brings two substantive counts. Count I, directed at the CFPB, Education Department, and VA, alleges unlawful denial, or constructive denial, of expedited processing. Count II, lodged against all four agencies, claims wrongful withholding of agency records. The watchdog seeks an order compelling each defendant to search for and disclose all responsive material, declarations that CREW is entitled to expedited treatment and fee waivers, preservation of potentially responsive records during the litigation’s pendency, and an award of attorneys’ fees and costs.

Attorneys: Jeffrey Stuart Gutman (GW Law) for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Companies: Citizens Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

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