Elon Musk must defend himself against a lawsuit alleging that he unlawfully seized too much power as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a judge ruled Monday.
According to the plaintiffs, Musk needed Senate confirmation before directing DOGE on drastic actions like eliminating agencies, mass firings, and steep budget cuts. Allegedly going far beyond the authority granted in President Donald Trump’s most expansive DOGE executive orders, Musk took every inch of power granted and then increasingly used it to overreach unlike any presidential advisor who came before, the suit says.
In her opinion partly denying a motion to dismiss, US District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan did not buy the US government’s defense that Musk held no office formally established by law—and therefore did not need Senate confirmation and cannot be alleged to have exceeded his authority under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause.
“Nobody thinks, for instance, that the White House Chief of Staff or White House Counsel are officers in any fashion, despite the fact they may exercise tremendous influence across the government,” the government’s motion to dismiss said.
Chutkan called the defense “disquieting.”
“Defendants appear to make the extraordinary argument that an individual who holds an important office and wields immense power is not subject to the Appointments Clause so long as the office was unlawfully created, and the power was unlawfully seized,” Chutkan said.
“Under that interpretation, the President could evade Appointments Clause scrutiny by (1) usurping Congress’s power to create a principal office and assign it powers, and (2) unilaterally appointing an official to that office without Senate confirmation,” the judge continued. “The court will not countenance such a two-fold attack on Congress’s role in our system of checks and balances,” she wrote, noting that “if the President unilaterally creates a principal office, endows it with unlawful powers, and fills it without Senate confirmation, that is more—not less—reason for Appointments Clause scrutiny.”
Chutkan also declined to view Musk’s influence as akin to that of Trump’s cabinet members, writing that “the alleged powers of the head of DOGE are clearly weighty and important.”
