Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency were sued in federal court Wednesday by people with disabilities alleging unconstitutional and illegal cuts to the Social Security Administration.

Five organizations representing different disabilities and seven of the groups’ disabled constituents named Musk, DOGE, the SSA and other agency officials in a complaint in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. They allege the defendants are violating the Rehabilitation Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Fifth Amendment.

“Cloaked in the threadbare rhetoric of streamlining operations and ‘prioritizing essential work,’ the defendants have systematically dismantled, and continue to dismantle, the core functions of SSA, abandoning millions of Americans to poverty and indignity,” the plaintiffs said.

The US Department of Justice didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Acting DOGE Administrator Amy Gleason and Acting Commissioner of SSA Leland Dudek were also named as co-defendants. Musk was named in his official capacity as the “de facto head of DOGE,” the complaint said.

Dudek announced in February that SSA would be eliminating at least 7,000 of its employees and began offering buyouts and early retirement, the complaint said. The plaintiffs allege this planned reduction in workforce stems from DOGE’s mission to eliminate waste in government spending and modernize federal information technology.

DOGE’s plans to close SSA offices and the “uncertainty” regarding other office functions will only worsen the agency’s problem of “mounting backlogs and debilitating delays,” the plaintiffs said.

SSA’s planned implementation of identity verification requirements also serves as an “unnecessary” restriction only making it “harder for people to get the support they need,” the plaintiffs said. The new requirements allegedly require SSA beneficiaries to verify their identity either online or in person at an SSA office.

The defendants are acting beyond their statutory authority and have failed to comply with federal law, the complaint said.

DOGE and SSA’s decision to eliminate its Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity and Office of Transformation deprives the plaintiffs of alternative grievance processes, the complaint said. This constitutes a withholding of an agency action and an arbitrary and capricious action, in violation of the APA, they allege.

The plaintiffs claim they’ve also been deprived of their rights to procedural due process and their right to petition the government under the Fifth Amendment, the complaint said. They’re asking the district court to declare the defendants’ actions illegal and unconstitutional, and enjoin them from demolishing OCREO and OT, terminating staff members, and implementing identity verification.

“What the defendants frame as “reform” is, in truth, administrative vandalism,” the complaint said.

Brown Goldstein & Levy LLP and Justice in Aging represent the plaintiffs.

The case is American Ass’n of People with Disabilities v. Dudek , D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00977, complaint 4/2/25.