Two New Federal Lawsuits Challenge Trump, Musk and DOGE on Constitutional Grounds
By Ashley Murray for States Newsroom
WASHINGTON — More than a dozen state attorneys general and numerous current and former government employees filed lawsuits Thursday aiming to stop billionaire Elon Musk from shuttering federal agencies.
The two complaints allege the far-reaching power Musk has asserted under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is a violation of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. The clause stipulates presidential appointments must come under the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate.
“Questions regarding Defendant Musk’s and DOGE’s role, scope of authority, and proper appointment processes are not merely academic. Plaintiffs — among countless other American individuals and entities — have had their lives upended as a result of the actions undertaken by Defendants Musk and DOGE,” according to a complaint filed by 26 unnamed former and current employees in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
The employees, though unidentified, collectively have decades of service at federal agencies, including USAID, where on February 2 Musk’s DOGE personnel broke into the agency’s headquarters.
Citing damages to their careers and financial security, the plaintiffs are seeking the court to block “Defendant Musk and his DOGE subordinates from performing their significant and wide-ranging duties unless and until Defendant Musk is properly appointed pursuant to the U.S. Constitution.”
Democratic Attorneys General
Fourteen state attorneys general filed a separate lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, requesting the court block further action from Musk and DOGE. The lawsuit also names President Donald Trump as a defendant.
Trump established the U.S. DOGE Service on his first night in office via executive order, and created the entity as a temporary organization with the purposes of modernizing government technology. Presidents do not have the power to create new federal agencies; by law only Congress can.
Musk is a “special government employee,” according to the White House.
The state attorneys general also argue that Musk’s actions, with Trump’s blessing, are violating the law governing temporary organizations under the executive branch.
“By its plain terms, this limited authorization does not amount to a carte blanche grant of authority to the Executive to create new federal agencies from whole cloth,” according to the complaint.
In the first three weeks of Trump’s administration, Musk and his personnel — most of whom worked at one of Musk’s private companies — have accessed the backend of numerous government agencies, including the Department of Treasury’s central payment system, and orchestrated the ouster of civil servants.
Musk has touted on X canceling millions upon millions in government payments and contracts.
Lawsuits Pile Up
The two lawsuits Thursday are just the latest among scores of legal challenges piling up against Musk and Trump.
Musk has lashed out on X, his own social media platform, against federal judges who have issued injunctions against the Trump administration.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said the U.S. Constitution was “founded in part to guard against the accumulation of state power in the hands of a single individual.”
“And while that construction was first focused on the abuse of power of an 18th-century monarch, it is no less dangerous in the hands of a 21st-century tech tycoon,” Torrez said during a virtual Thursday press conference alongside Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.
Mayes said Americans are witnessing an “ongoing coup against the Constitution of the United States as we speak.”
“The richest man in the world is now running roughshod over the authority of federal agencies in violation of the rule of law and the Constitution,” Mayes said.
Nessel said Musk’s actions are “by far the largest and most urgent concern of the individuals, Michiganders, who have been reaching out to my office.”
“It’s left them feeling hopeless and paralyzed to protect themselves, their personal information, critical funding, programming and jobs that they depend on,” Nessel said during the press conference.
State attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, also joined the lawsuit.
Musk’s estimated wealth is $379 billion, according to Bloomberg’s billionaire index cited by the government employee plaintiffs. Musk owns Tesla, SpaceX, Neurolink, xAI and X, formerly known as Twitter. During the 2024 presidential election cycle, Musk was the top donor to Trump and Republicans at $288 million.
DOGE stands for Department of Government Extraction. Musk wants to extract as much money from the taxpayers as possible, so he can get big tax breaks while cutting vital services for millions of Americans.