The harm required for an injunction “is not present here,” according to Richardson. He wrote that each “plaintiff’s information is one row in various databases that are millions upon millions of rows long. The harm that might come from granting database access to an additional handful of government employees—prone as they may be to hacks or leaks, as the plaintiffs have alleged—strikes me as different in kind, not just in degree, from the harm inflicted by reporters, detectives, and paparazzi.”

Judge Nicole Berner, a Biden appointee who dissented from the 8-7 vote against an en banc hearing, said the court “majority effectively denies the plaintiffs the relief they seek without adjudication of their case on the merits. Permitting DOGE unfettered access to the plaintiffs’ personally identifiable information lets the proverbial genie out of the bottle. Even if they ultimately prevail, the plaintiffs will already have suffered irreparable harm.”