A federal court has sided with the Trump administration, resolving a disagreement with New York Attorney General Letitia James over the broad scope of cost-cutting efforts to scrutinize US Treasury payments that they believe are bloated with excessive spending.

James was one of 18 Democratic attorneys general who sued to stop the US Department of Government Efficiency’s inquiry of the Treasury payment system. The clique suffered a significant blow on Tuesday when U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas of the Southern District of New York eased the final legal obstacle for the four DOGE workers entrusted with conducting the inquiry.

A previous injunction was also lifted when the Trump administration demonstrated that it had properly instructed the four employees to protect sensitive taxpayer information during the investigation. Vargas allowed access to one DOGE employee in April after they had finished a similar training session.

Before those judgments, the judge, a Biden appointee, mainly agreed with state prosecutors who contended that the Treasury’s access-granting mechanisms were insufficiently developed, potentially violating the law.

The current verdict also relieves DOGE of the need to seek a court order every time the austerity agency adds additional staff members to the Treasury inquiry.

“[T]here is little utility in having this Court function as Treasury’s de facto human resources officer each time a new team member is onboarded,” Vargas wrote in her order, Politico reported.

“The parties are in agreement that … the New DOGE Employees should be permitted to have access to (Bureau of the Fiscal Service) payment systems,” she explained.

Treasury DOGE team leader Tom Krause and DOGE members Linda Whitridge, Samuel Corcos, and Todd Newman collaborated to submit dozens of pages of paperwork outlining the rigorous training processes that workers would have to go through before accessing Treasury data.