A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has upheld an injunction blocking an Internal Revenue Service policy that allowed the agency to share taxpayer address information with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The court ruled that the Trump administration's practice violated federal law.
The panel, appointed by former President Barack Obama, said the IRS procedures broke federal law in multiple ways. U.S. Circuit Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote that the most serious violation was the failure to require ICE to provide an actual address for a taxpayer, as legally required. She also said the process "automates the review of millions of records without any individual review or any other means of ensuring compliance with the legal prerequisites to releasing each individual taxpayer's information."
The dispute centers on an inter-agency agreement under which the IRS began processing ICE requests in July 2025. ICE requested the last known addresses of up to 1.28 million people suspected of unlawfully residing in the United States. Before a lower-court judge blocked the policy, the IRS had disclosed 47,289 taxpayer addresses, or about 47,000, to ICE last year.
The case involved the Center for Taxpayer Rights, Main Street Alliance and Democracy Forward, a liberal legal group representing the plaintiffs. The decision follows a post-Watergate legal framework established after President Richard Nixon's era, when Congress restricted the IRS from sharing information with other government agencies unless stringent conditions were met to prevent abuses of power.
On appeal, the Trump administration argued that the ruling would hinder federal law enforcement. Judge Pillard responded: "But that's a gripe with Congress, not the court."
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson disagreed with the ruling and said the agency "will continue using every lawful tool available to locate and remove illegal aliens with final orders of removal." Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward said the group was pleased the court "acted to stop this unlawful behavior," adding that post-Watergate privacy laws "exist to prevent abuses of power just like this."
