US Supreme Court Grants DOGE Unfettered Access to SSA Systems

The U.S. Supreme Court granted Friday a Trump administration cost-cutting effort known as the “Department of Government Efficiency” access to data on Americans held at the Social Security Administration.

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The court’s conservative justices in an unsigned order undid an injunction imposed in March by a federal district court in Maryland and upheld by two federal appellate reviews.

“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 order states. Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Unions and an advocacy organization sued the Social Security Administration in a bid to prevent DOGE staffers from accessing records kept on U.S. citizens – records that can contain information on medical and mental health conditions, earnings and birth and marriage records. They accused DOGE of overlooking protections imposed by the Privacy Act, as well as violating federal rules for instituting new policies.

U.S. District for the District of Maryland Judge Ellen Hollander directed DOGE staffers to delete data not anonymized and ordered them to remove any software they had installed on agency systems. “The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” Hollander concluded.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued Hollander overstepped her authority. “District courts should not second-guess whether particular government employees really need particular records to do their jobs,” he told the court.

In a dissent penned by Jackson and joined by Sotomayor, two liberal justices accused their conservative colleagues of a double standard. Applicants for judicial stays, Jackson wrote, have been told through previous rulings that they must show an irreparable injury. Hollander’s injunction permitted the DOGE team to continue its work of detecting fraud using anonymized data, Jackson wrote. As a result, “the government has plainly failed to meet the moment, as it has not shown that it will suffer any concrete or irreparable harm unless this Court immediately intervenes.”

“The court is thereby, unfortunately, suggesting that what would be an extraordinary request for everyone else is nothing more than an ordinary day on the docket for this administration,” she added.

DOGE, until recently led – whether formally or informally – by mercurial multi-billionaire Elon Musk, has been responsible for a slew of questionable cybersecurity decisions (see: DOGE’s Nine Worst Cybersecurity Failures Under Elon Musk).