Minnesota joins new lawsuit challenging constitutional authority of Elon Musk, DOGE

Protesters rally outside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on February 10, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Minnesota has joined 13 other states in a federal lawsuit challenging Elon Musk’s “seemingly limitless and unchecked power to strip the government of its workforce and eliminate entire departments with the stroke of a pen.”

The lawsuit requests a temporary restraining order declaring that all of Musk’s governmental action to date shall have no legal effect, and bar Musk and his so-called “DOGE” group from ordering changes to federal funding, cancelling government contracts, terminating regulations, making personnel decisions, dismantling agencies, accessing sensitive data and altering data systems.

“It is unacceptable and unconstitutional for Trump to create a new federal agency without congressional approval,” said Attorney General Keith Ellison in a statement. “Worse still, Trump installed Elon Musk at the head of that agency without vetting and Senate confirmation, and Musk has proceeded to use that unconstitutional appointment to try to cut the federal government to the bone.”

The lawsuit argues that “the sweeping authority now vested in a single unelected and unconfirmed individual is antithetical to the nation’s entire constitutional structure.” Trump’s elevation of Musk “transformed a minor position that was formerly responsible for managing government websites into a designated agent of chaos without limitation and in violation of the separation of powers.”

Musk’s team, which includes inexperienced engineers who have made racist statements in public and been fired from previous jobs for leaking company secrets, has been accessing sensitive private data at numerous federal agencies and begun ordering steep cuts at some. 

The actions are an apparently blatant violation of the Constitution, which grants spending authority to Congress. But the Republican lawmakers who control Congress have offered virtually no pushback thus far.

“The separation of powers is one of the core, fundamental principles that undergirds our constitutional structure,” the attorneys general argue. “It is Congress, not the president, that possesses the power to enact laws and appropriate funds.”

This is at least the sixth lawsuit against the Trump administration that Minnesota has been a party to. The others include challenges to administration actions on birthright citizenship, federal spending, access to the Treasury payments system, restrictions on gender-affirming care and cuts to National Institutes of Health grants.

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