U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security could not go ahead with their plan to send joint letters warning businesses they will face penalties if they keep workers whose Social Security numbers do not match their names.

Breyer said the new work-site rule would likely impose hardships on businesses and their workers. Employers would incur new costs to comply with the regulation that the government has not evaluated, and innocent workers unable to correct mistakes in their records in the given time would lose their jobs, the judge wrote.

The government had about 140,000 letters ready to go, each containing the names of 10 or more employees with mismatches in their records. About 8 million employees would be affected, according to court documents.

Source: Associated Press