Supreme Court Allows DOGE Team to Access Social Security Systems with Data on Millions of Americans

Yomiuri Shimbun

19 hours ago

Reuters
Illustration shows United States Social Security Administration logo and U.S. flag
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration two victories Friday in cases involving the Department of Government Efficiency, including giving it access to Social Security systems containing personal data on millions of Americans.
The justices also separately reined in orders seeking transparency at DOGE, the team once led by billionaire Elon Musk.
The court's conservative majority sided with the Trump administration in the first Supreme Court appeals involving DOGE. The three liberal justices dissented in both cases.
The DOGE victories come amid a messy breakup between the president and the world's richest man that started shortly after Musk's departure from the White House and has included threats to cut government contracts and a call for the president to be impeached. The future of DOGE's work isn't clear without Musk at the helm, but both men have previously said that it will continue its efforts.
In one case, the high court halted an order from a judge in Maryland that has restricted the team's access to the Social Security Administration under federal privacy laws.
'We conclude that, under the present circumstances, SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work,' the court said in an unsigned order. Conservative lower-court judges have said there's no evidence at this point of DOGE mishandling personal information.
The agency holds sensitive data on nearly everyone in the country, including school records, salary details and medical information.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the court's action creates 'grave privacy risks' for millions of Americans by giving 'unfettered data access to DOGE regardless — despite its failure to show any need or any interest in complying with existing privacy safeguards, and all before we know for sure whether federal law countenances such access.' Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined Jackson's opinion and Justice Elena Kagan said she also would have ruled against the administration.
The Trump administration says DOGE needs the access to carry out its mission of targeting waste in the federal government. Musk had been focused on Social Security as an alleged hotbed of fraud. The entrepreneur has described it as a ' Ponzi scheme ' and insisted that reducing waste in the program is an important way to cut government spending.
But U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland found that DOGE's efforts at Social Security amounted to a 'fishing expedition' based on 'little more than suspicion' of fraud, and allowing unfettered access puts Americans' private information at risk.
Her ruling did allow access to anonymous data for staffers who have undergone training and background checks, or wider access for those who have detailed a specific need.
The Trump administration has said DOGE can't work effectively with those restrictions.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer also argued that the ruling is an example of federal judges overstepping their authority and trying to micromanage executive branch agencies.
The plaintiffs say it's a narrow order that's urgently needed to protect personal information.
An appeals court previously refused to immediately to lift the block on DOGE access, though it split along ideological lines. Conservative judges in the minority said there's no evidence that the team has done any 'targeted snooping' or exposed personal information.
The lawsuit was originally filed by a group of labor unions and retirees represented by the group Democracy Forward. It's one of more than two dozen lawsuits filed over DOGE's work, which has included deep cuts at federal agencies and large-scale layoffs.
The plaintiffs called the high court's order 'a sad day for our democracy and a scary day for millions of people. Elon Musk may have left Washington, D.C., but his impact continues to harm millions of people.'
Liz Huston, a spokesperson for the White House, applauded the order. 'The Supreme Court allowing the Trump Administration to carry out commonsense efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse and modernize government information systems is a huge victory for the rule of law.'
The nation's court system has been ground zero for pushback to President Donald Trump's sweeping conservative agenda, with hundreds of lawsuits filed challenging policies on everything from immigration to education to mass layoffs of federal workers.
In the other DOGE order handed down Friday, the justices extended a pause on orders that would require the team to publicly disclose information about its operations, as part of a lawsuit filed by a government watchdog group.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington argues that DOGE, which has been central to Trump's push to remake the government, is a federal agency and must be subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
But the Trump administration says DOGE is just a presidential advisory body aimed at government cost-cutting, which would make it exempt from requests for documents under FOIA.
The justices did not decide that issue Friday, but the conservative majority held that U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled too broadly in ordering documents be turned over to CREW.