Washington. D.C. – Democracy Forward is asking two courts to permit an expanded, urgent investigation into data sharing practices between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as part of the fallout after news reports revealed that the IRS illegally shared private data with U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE staff.
The new filings come in Center for Taxpayer Rights et al. v Internal Revenue Service et al, a case brought by Democracy Forward on behalf of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, Main Street Alliance, Communications Workers of America, and the National Federation of Federal Employees. The plaintiffs in the case achieved a stay last November that has prevented the IRS from sharing data on millions of taxpayers with ICE, and today’s filings ask the District and Circuit Courts, where the case is currently being considered, to temporarily lift the stay in order to allow a new discovery phase that can investigate the recent revelation that the new slipshod privacy protections put in place by the Trump-Vance administration at IRS led to the illegal disclosure of confidential taxpayer information to DHS.
“We warned that the policies put in place by the Trump-Vance administration would lead to breaches in the privacy of taxpayer data, and though the government denied that reality when we filed suit last year, the administration has now been forced to admit that it is being careless and irresponsible with sensitive, personal information,” said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward. “These new revelations show how important it is that courts hold the administration accountable for their unlawful activity. We must know the full extent of this dangerous data sharing as we work to defend the right of privacy for everyone in America.”
In 2025, the IRS abruptly abandoned longstanding commitments to privacy and adopted a new data-access policy that unlawfully permitted the broad sharing of sensitive taxpayer data outside the agency. In April, the IRS executed a memorandum of understanding with ICE that established a process by which the IRS planned to share taxpayer data with ICE, including taxpayers’ last-known addresses. In August, the IRS processed ICE’s mass request for the last-known addresses of 1.2 million taxpayers, sharing address information for approximately 47,000 individuals. Soon after the plaintiffs challenged the new policy, a District Court issued an order stopping the unlawful data sharing, which the government appealed.
Today’s filings come after the IRS confirmed the Washington Post’s reporting in a court filing this week in which Dottie Romo, the IRS chief risk and control officer, swore in a declaration that the IRS provided confidential taxpayer information even when DHS officials could not provide sufficient data to positively identify a specific individual.
It comes as filings made by DOJ in another case litigated by Democracy Forward have revealed that privacy protocols were violated at the Social Security Administration and that a DOGE team member at SSA signed a “voter data agreement” with an organization involved in seeking to “overturn state election results.”
The legal team at Democracy Forward on CRT v. IRS includes Daniel A. McGrath, Simon Brewer, Maddy Gitomer, Johanna M. Hickman, Robin F. Thurston, Steven Y. Bressler, and Skye L. Perryman.
Today’s filing in the district court can be found here, and the circuit court filing is here.
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Democracy Forward Foundation is a national legal organization that advances democracy and social progress through litigation, policy, public education, and regulatory engagement. For more information, please visit www.democracyforward.org.
