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The American Federation of Teachers filed a federal lawsuit this week alleging that, in an unprecedented move, the Department of Education illegally gave Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access to millions of private and sensitive records, violating the federal Privacy Act.

Six individuals joined the suit, filed by the nation’s second-largest teacher’s union, alongside a coalition of labor unions representing over 2 million workers. Those impacted include teachers, who relied on federal student loans to pay for their college tuition, and high school students, who recently filed their federal financial aid forms with the department.

“When I filled out the FAFSA, I gave my Social Security number and my parent’s income information as well as their investment information,” Maryland high school student Sara Porcari said at an AFT news conference held on Zoom Wednesday. “I thought that information would be private and secure. Now I’m not sure what’s happening.”

“I’m only 17 years old,” she continued, “and I don’t know who has access to my personal information or how this data breach will affect my future in college and in general.”

AFT President Randi Weingarten questioned why Musk, a billionaire given free rein by the president to remake the federal government, and DOGE want access to that information, expressing doubts about their stated purpose of improving government efficiency. 

 An AFT press release Tuesday called for “Elon Musk and his minions to be immediately evicted from the U.S. Department of Education,” alleging they were feeding the data from millions of people’s private student loan accounts “into artificial intelligence in one of the biggest data hacks in U.S. history.”

Ernesh Stewart, a Washington, D.C. school counselor and mom, echoed those concerns Wednesday, “Why do you need to access my daughter’s scholarship information? Why do you even need my home address? I can’t help but wonder if there is a hidden agenda. If one of the country’s wealthiest men, who also happens to be deeply invested in AI, has access to all this information, whatever it is, I feel like it’s a gross violation of privacy.”

The Education Department, which oversees the private information of 43 million student borrowers who hold $1.6 trillion in student debt, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A DOGE representative did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Weingarten and other panelists at the conference expressed their hope that President Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon, would join them in condemning this “data breach,” during her confirmation hearing tomorrow.

“I would hope that what she would do is protect students and protect families from this kind of financial intrusion and invasion and … say to the millions of people that have been affected the steps she’s taking to stop it,” Weingarten said.

While the lawsuit contends government agencies have valid purposes for maintaining these record systems, the Privacy Act makes clear they can only provide access to them in very specific situations. Here, though, the filing argues, DOGE representatives have accessed the data to shut down payments “and in the case of the Education Department, the agency itself.”

After gaining access to the systems last week, Musk, who is not an elected official, turned to X, the social media platform he owns, to boast that the Department of Education no longer exists. 

What is this “Department of Education” you keep talking about?

I just checked and it doesn’t exist.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2025

In another DOGE-led effort, the Trump administration moved Monday to gut the Institute of Education Sciences, temporarily disabling an essential source of data on a host of basic information, ranging from high school graduation rates to school safety. 

DOGE was created by a Trump executive order in January. Supporters argue Musk is working to cut federal bloat and streamline systems. But critics say Musk, whose companies, including SpaceX, receive billions in government contracts, lacks transparency and has immense conflicts of interest.  

The suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Maryland, also alleges that the U.S. Department of Education, along with the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Treasury, has exposed millions of Americans to “the risk of identity theft, harassment, intimidation, and embarrassment” by improperly disclosing their sensitive records to DOGE employees who lack appropriate security clearances. The staff includes a 19-year-old who has previously leaked proprietary information, according to the suit.

WIRED magazine broke the story earlier this month that at the center of DOGE’s effort to take over various federal departments and agencies are six male engineers, ages 19 to 24, with ties to Musk.

In particular, plaintiffs claim that the Department of Education and its acting head, Denise Carter, have released data from the National Student Loan Data System, a financial aid-related database housed within the Education Department that contains information on almost 34 million borrowers and their families. It includes a plethora of sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, bank records, home addresses and immigration status. 

About 20 people with DOGE have begun working inside the education department, looking to cut spending and staff. According to reporting from The Washington Post, some of these representatives have fed sensitive and personally identifiable data from across the department into artificial intelligence software to look into the agency’s programs and spending.

Plaintiffs are asking the court to restore the protections of the Privacy Act to end the disclosure of the data immediately and are demanding that any data currently in DOGE’s possession be deleted and destroyed. The act, put in place in the wake of the Watergate scandal, regulates the circumstances in which agency records about individuals can be shared; disclosing anything beyond this is illegal. 

On Tuesday, a federal judge in a separate suit against the Education Department blocked Musk’s team from accessing several systems that store sensitive data including student loans, but only temporarily. In a hearing for that case, Musk said he did not see how DOGE’s access to student loan data caused harm.

While it has previously been reported that DOGE representatives are political appointees, it now appears that some have received official government credentials, including email addresses, at multiple agencies, including at the Department of Education, leading to confusion about who actually employs them.

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