On Friday, the Supreme Court granted access to Social Security databases containing the personal information of millions of Americans, one of two victories granted to the Trump administration in matters pertaining to the Department of Government Efficiency.
Separately, the judges rescinded directives for openness at DOGE, the group that former entrepreneur Elon Musk oversaw.
During the initial Supreme Court challenges concerning DOGE, the conservative majority of the court supported the Trump administration. Both cases were dissented from by the three liberal justices.
In the midst of a stormy split that began soon after Musk left the White House and has included demands to slash government contracts and impeachment of the president, the DOGE have emerged victorious.
One instance included the team’s access to the Social Security Administration being restricted because to federal privacy regulations; however, this order was delayed by the high court after a judge in Maryland had issued it.
“We decide that, under the existing circumstances, SSA may proceed to allow members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency data in question so that those members can do their work,” the court ruled in an unsigned judgment.
Almost every citizen’s private information, such as their medical records, pay stubs, and school records, is kept by the government agency.
For millions of Americans, the court’s decision poses “grave privacy risks” because it grants “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,” as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put it. In addition to Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan stated that she, too, would have sided against the government.
According to the Trump administration, DOGE cannot fulfill its mandate to combat federal waste and fraud without access. Social Security was the supposed fraud hotspot that Musk had been concentrating on. The self-made millionaire has distanced himself from DOGE, calling it a “Ponzi scheme,” and has maintained that cutting program waste is a crucial step toward decreasing government expenditure.
Judge Ellen Hollander of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland ruled that the Department of General Services’ (DOGE) attempts to access Social Security were nothing more than a “fishing expedition” motivated by “little more than suspicion” of fraud, and that unrestricted access endangers the personal information of Americans.
Her decision did pave the way for trained and background-checked employees to have access to anonymous data, or for people with special needs to have broader access.
According to the Trump administration, DOGE is unable to function efficiently under such constraints.
According to Solicitor General John Sauer, federal courts are seeking to micromanage executive branch agencies, and this verdict is just another example of that.
In their urgent request to safeguard individuals’ private information, the plaintiffs have argued for a modest injunction.
A prior appeals court divided along ideological lines, yet it nevertheless declined to quickly remove the DOGE access barrier. There is no proof that the team has engaged in any “targeted snooping” or disclosed personal information, according to the conservative minority judges.
Democracy Forward initially represented a coalition of pensioners and labor organizations that initiated the lawsuit. More than twenty lawsuits have been launched in response to DOGE’s actions, which have resulted in massive layoffs and budget cuts at government agencies.
About 200 lawsuits have been filed opposing policies on immigration, education, and mass layoffs of federal employees, among other topics, making the nation’s judicial system the epicentre of resistance to President Trump’s expansive conservative agenda.
Second, in response to a challenge brought by a government monitoring organization, the justices put off issuing orders that would have required DOGE to make some information regarding its activities publicly available.
According to Washington-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, the Department of Government Ethics (DOGE) ought to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act as it is a federal department and has played a major role in President Trump’s effort to revitalize the government.
However, according to the Trump administration, DOGE is only an advisory body to the president that seeks to eradicate federal government waste, fraud, and abuse, thereby exempting it from FOIA requests for documents.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s ruling requiring the papers to be given up to CREW was deemed overly broad by the conservative majority, but the justices did not rule on that issue on Friday.