Supreme Court Gives DOGE Access to Social Security Data (3)

The US Supreme Court gave the Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive Social Security information, lifting restrictions a judge said were needed to protect the privacy of millions of Americans.

Over three dissents, the high court on Friday granted a Trump administration request to put US District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander’s order on hold. The decision lets DOGE, the office once led by Elon Musk, have full access to personally identifiable information in the Social Security Administration database while the case proceeds on appeal.

“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 a three-paragraph order, which didn’t lay out the majority’s reasoning.

The court’s three liberals — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented. In an opinion joined by Sotomayor, Jackson said the court was “creating grave privacy risks for millions of Americans.”

In a separate decision, the high court said a different judge went too far by requiring DOGE officials to testify and produce records to a watchdog group. The order came in a case about whether the DOGE office is covered by US public records laws. The Supreme Court liberals dissented from that decision as well.

The cases are the first Supreme Court clashes involving DOGE, the office set up by President Donald Trump to weed out what he says is wasteful spending across the federal government.

Sensitive Data

Musk recently left his formal government position within the administration and is now publicly feuding with Trump.

In the SSA case, US Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court that “the government cannot eliminate waste and fraud if district courts bar the very agency personnel with expertise and the designated mission of curtailing such waste and fraud from performing their jobs.”

The disputed data includes Social Security numbers, addresses, birth and marriage certificates, tax and earnings records, employment history, and bank and credit card information.

Hollander said two labor unions and an advocacy group for retired people were likely to succeed on their claims that unfettered access would violate the 1974 Privacy Act.

“For some 90 years, SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records,” the Baltimore-based judge wrote. “This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation.”

Hollander’s order allowed DOGE team members access to anonymized data only after completing the type of training and background checks required for SSA employees. She said DOGE employees could get “discrete, particularized and non-anonymized” information if they submitted a written statement explaining why the information was needed and why anonymous data was insufficient.

Hollander also ordered people affiliated with DOGE to delete data they’ve already acquired. The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals kept Hollander’s order in place on a 9-6 vote.

In her dissent, Jackson said the lower courts had crafted an order “tailored to the needs of the moment.” She said the Supreme Court had “truly lost its moorings” by granting the government’s request without requiring it to show that it was suffering any harm.

“The ‘urgency’ underlying the government’s stay application is the mere fact that it cannot be bothered to wait for the litigation process to play out before proceeding as it wishes,” she wrote.

Democracy Forward, the legal-advocacy group that represented the challengers, said it was a “sad day for our democracy and a scary day for millions of people.”

White House spokesperson Liz Huston hailed the decision. “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,” she said in an email.

The case is Social Security Administration v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, 24A1063.

DOGE Records

The Supreme Court’s action in the records case blocks a Washington federal judge’s order for the administration to answer questions, produce documents and make DOGE administrator Amy Gleason available to testify at a deposition.

US District Judge Christopher Cooper had authorized the group that brought the public records case, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, to gather evidence about DOGE’s activities as it fights with the Justice Department over the office’s legal status.

The Supreme Court majority faulted Cooper for requiring the government to disclose internal DOGE recommendations and to say whether those suggestions were followed.

“Separation of powers concerns counsel judicial deference and restraint in the context of discovery regarding internal executive branch communications,” the Supreme Court said in its two-page order.

Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson didn’t explain their reasons for dissenting.

CREW has argued that the DOGE Service should be considered an agency under the federal Freedom of Information Act, which empowers the public to see a wide range of government records. The Trump administration disagrees, arguing that DOGE plays a purely advisory role within the White House and is exempt from the law.

Musk served as the public face of DOGE, but government lawyers stressed in court that Gleason is the formal head of the DOGE office.

CREW’s underlying public records request seeks to pry loose new information about the Tesla Inc. chief executive’s role in dramatic cuts to federal spending and the workforce. The lawsuit also aims to reveal more broadly what DOGE-affiliated staff have been doing and the structure of that effort across US agencies.

The case is US DOGE Service v. CREW, 24A1122.

(Updates with Jackson comments, reaction starting in 14th paragraph.)

--With assistance from Gregory Korte.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net;
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

Anthony Aarons

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