By: The Editorial Board – wsj.com – February 19, 2025

Judge Chutkan says Democratic plaintiffs need evidence of harm.

Fourteen Democratic state Attorneys General asked Judge Chutkan to enjoin Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from undertaking sundry actions. These include ordering changes in disbursement of public funds, making personnel decisions, accessing sensitive agency data, and directing that regulations be rescinded.

The AGs argued that Mr. Musk and his DOGE colleagues aren’t lawfully appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. While Judge Chutkan noted this argument may have legal merit, she denied their request because they failed to show they’d suffer irreparable harm if an injunction weren’t issued.

“The court’s analysis here begins and ends with irreparable harm, ‘a threshold requirement in granting temporary injunctive relief,’” wrote Judge Chutkan, a Barack Obama appointee. Readers may recall that Judge Chutkan oversaw Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 prosecution of Donald Trump and rejected the President’s immunity claims.

States’ declarations are “replete with attestations” that actions by Mr. Musk and DOGE defendants could cause “extreme financial and programmatic harm,” she scored. But none are certain to occur. New Mexico claimed it might be “vulnerable to embezzlement, cyber theft, ransom attacks, and other financial crimes” if Labor Department “sensitive data is compromised.”

“Plaintiffs ask the court to take judicial notice of widespread media reports that DOGE has taken or will soon take certain actions, such as mass terminations,” Judge Chutkan noted. “But these reports cannot substitute for ‘specific facts in an affidavit or a verified complaint; that ‘clearly show that immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage will result.’”

As Judge Chutkan put it: “The court may take judicial notice of news articles for their existence, but not for the truth of the statements asserted therein.” Touche. Granting an immediate injunction based on hypothetical harms would undermine the legal process. Democrats hunting for a constitutional crisis might want to show evidence before they cry “dictator.”

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Source: Judge Wants DOGE Facts, Not Fears – WSJ