Judge Vargas dismisses the states’ Treasury DOGE suit

Holding (final). In New York v. Trump, Judge Vargas held that “Plaintiffs’ claims related to access by DOGE-affiliated employees to sensitive Treasury information are dismissed as moot.” Her stated premise was that “the Treasury DOGE team has been disbanded.” She dismissed the remaining claims, which concerned an automated payment-review process, for failure to state a claim, and directed the clerk to close the case.

What the earlier injunction held. The preliminary-injunction opinion rested on the Administrative Procedure Act: “Plaintiffs will more likely than not succeed in establishing that the agency’s” processes were arbitrary and capricious. On the Privacy Act, the same opinion held “the claims based upon the Privacy Act are unlikely to succeed on the merits,” because the states’ interest in their own financial data fell outside the statute’s zone of interests. That makes this case a record of an administrative-law ruling, not a court finding of a privacy-rule violation.

Status. The government’s appeal ended when, per the Second Circuit, “The parties in the above-referenced case have filed a stipulation withdrawing this appeal pursuant to FRAP 42.”