IRS Ordered to Produce Administrative Record on Data Sharing

At least one of the groups suing to stop the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing IRS data on US taxpayers likely has standing to sue and has shown the agency has a policy of sharing that information, a federal judge said Tuesday.

In a minute order, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the US District Court for the District of Columbia stopped short of ruling on the organizations’ preliminary injunction motion to block the data sharing, saying she still needs a copy of the administrative record to make a determination. She gave the government 45 days to produce that record, which is now due Oct. 24.

The lawsuit from taxpayer interest organizations and unions—including the Center for Taxpayer Rights, Main Street Alliance, the National Federation of Federal Employees, and Communications Workers of America—notes that the IRS began sharing information on thousands of taxpayers with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Aug. 4 as part of a new policy to share data with other agencies following the creation of DOGE.

The plaintiffs “have shown a substantial likelihood that at least one Plaintiff, the Center for Taxpayer Rights, has Article III standing based on the harms to its core activities,” Kollar-Kotelly said in her order, adding that she plans to explain her decision more fully in a forthcoming written decision.

“Furthermore, Plaintiffs have shown a substantial likelihood that the IRS has taken final agency action by adopting and implementing a policy of disclosing the addresses of tens of thousands of taxpayers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (‘ICE’) based on a representation from ICE that a single ICE employee is (or a small number of ICE employees are) ‘personally and directly engaged’ in investigating each of those taxpayers for committing a criminal offense under 8 U.S.C. § 1253(a)(1),” the judge found.

But the court needs the administrative record to determine the remainder of the preliminary injunction motion, including the plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the information sharing policy is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Democracy Forward Foundation represents the plaintiffs.

The Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, represents employees of Bloomberg Law.

The case is Ctr. for Taxpayer Rights v. Internal Revenue Serv., D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00457, minute order 9/9/25.