Who let the DOGE out: Musk-led panel faces challenges for flouting US law

Slashing regulations and reducing the size of the US government have long been ideological goals of the Republican Party.

But the speed at which the Trump administration has moved to cut the US bureaucracy down to size – figuratively and otherwise – has taken many people by surprise.

President Donald Trump has entrusted Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur and his biggest financial backer, to lead the effort to reduce the federal government workforce and slash spending under the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk has moved at lightning speed, with his team putting in 120 hours a week in the first 10 days of the Trump presidency.

From putting government employees on probation to freezing federal funds, DOGE has created what one analyst calls a “state of terminal anxiety” among the roughly three million civil servants who may lose their jobs in a first-of-its-kind mass layoff in the history of the US government.

But DOGE is facing a legal challenge that may bring the ongoing purge of the US government to nought in the coming weeks.

DOGE is not a department of the US government, even though its name suggests otherwise. Its role is advisory at best, which means it cannot act independently of the 15 executive departments that make up the federal US government.

That was the reason the Senate’s confirmation was not required for Musk’s appointment as DOGE lead.

More importantly, every government advisory platform in the US must comply with the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), a 1972 legislation that formalises the process for establishing, operating, overseeing and terminating government advisory bodies.

A lawsuit, which names President Trump and the Office of Management and Budget as defendants, says DOGE is violating the Act, mainly because its members do not have a “fair balance of viewpoints”, a key legal requirement for all government advisory bodies.

Filed by the American Federation of Government Employees, advocacy group Public Citizen and non-profit State Democracy Defenders Fund, the lawsuit says that DOGE meetings are held in secret and without public notice, while its records remain inaccessible to US citizens, which violate FACA conditions.

Successive US presidents have used FACA to establish commissions or task forces to obtain advice from the private sector. However, the law imposes specific guardrails on such bodies to prevent them from turning into “vehicles for advancing private interests” in the federal decision-making process, the lawsuit says.

DOGE seems to have violated many FACA provisions. For example, neither President Trump nor his Office of Management and Budget has filed a “charter” for DOGE.

Under FACA, no advisory committee can meet or take any action until the filing of its charter containing important information like the committee’s scope of activity, description of duties and expected operating costs.

This provision has been violated by Musk’s team, which has apparently gained access to the US Treasury Department’s payment system that sends out more than $6 trillion a year in funds on behalf of federal agencies and contains the personal information of millions of Americans.

“Operating without complying with FACA, DOGE has already begun developing recommendations and influencing decision-making in the new administration, even though its membership lacks the fair balance,” the lawsuit says.

FACA requires that the reports, minutes and studies prepared by an advisory committee must be made “available for public inspection”. Its meetings must be attended by a federal officer, and only that officer is authorised to call a meeting, according to the law.

The New York Times reported that individuals involved in DOGE have sought to maintain secrecy about its activities. Such individuals have conducted “much of its communication… on Signal, the encrypted messaging app,” and have not made those communications available to the public.

The lawsuit asks the US District Court for the District of Columbia to declare the creation and administration of DOGE unlawful and in violation of FACA.

Separately, public interest groups have filed at least three lawsuits against DOGE. These include unions representing employees of the US Treasury who seek to block the Trump administration from weakening job protections for career civil servants and replacing them with party loyalists.