DOGE employees can search Social Security records, Supreme Court says
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- The justices lifted a court order that had barred a team of DOGE employees from freely examining Social Security records.
- In a second order, the justices blocked the disclosure of DOGE operations. The court’s three liberals dissented in both cases.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court cleared the way Friday for the DOGE team that had been led by Elon Musk to examine Social Security records that include personal information on most Americans.
Acting by a 6-3 vote, the justices granted an appeal from President Trump’s lawyers and lifted a court order that had barred a team of DOGE employees from freely examining Social Security records.
“We conclude that, under the present circumstances,” the Social Security Administration, or 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.
In a second order, the justices blocked the disclosure of DOGE operations as agency records that could be subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
The court’s three liberals — Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — dissented in both cases.
The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to clear the way for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to access Social Security systems containing personal data on millions of Americans.
“Today, the court grants ‘emergency’ relief that allows the Social Security Administration (SSA) to hand DOGE staffers the highly sensitive data of millions of Americans,” Jackson wrote. “The Government wants to give DOGE unfettered access to this personal, non-anonymized information right now — before the courts have time to assess whether DOGE’s access is lawful.”
The legal fight turned on the unusual status of the newly created Department of Governmental Efficiency. This was a not true department, but the name given to the team of aggressive outside advisors led by Musk.
Were the DOGE team members presidential advisors or outsiders who should not be given access to personal data?
While Social Security employees are entrusted with the records containing personal information, it was disputed whether the 11 DOGE team members could be trusted with same material.
Musk had said the goal was to find evidence of fraud or misuse of government funds.
He and DOGE were sued by labor unions who said the outside analysts were sifting through records with personal information that was protected by the privacy laws. Unless checked, the DOGE team could create highly personal computer profiles of every person, they said.
A federal judge in Maryland agreed and issued an order restricting the work of DOGE.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander, an Obama appointee, barred DOGE staffers from having access to the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans. But her order did not restrict the Social Security staff or DOGE employees from using data that did not identify people or sensitive personal information.
In late April, the divided 4th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to set aside the judge’s order by a 9-6 vote.
Judge Robert King said the “government has sought to accord the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) immediate and unfettered access to all records of the Social Security Administration (‘SSA’) — records that include the highly sensitive personal information of essentially everyone in our country.”
The Justice Department’s emergency appeal to the high court said U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston exceeded his authority last month when he issued a preliminary injunction reversing the layoffs.
But Trump Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer appealed to the Supreme Court and said a judge should not “second guess” how the administration manages the government.
He said the district judge had “enjoined particular agency employees — the 11 members of the Social Security Administration (SSA) DOGE team — from accessing data that other agency employees can unquestionably access, and that the SSA DOGE team will use for purposes that are unquestionably lawful. ... The Executive Branch, not district courts, sets government employees’ job responsibilities.”
Sauer said the DOGE team was seeking to modernize SSA systems and identify improper payments, for instance by reviewing swaths of records and flagging unusual payment patterns or other signs of fraud.
The DOGE employees “are subject to the same strict confidentiality standards as other SSA employees,” he said. Moreover, the plaintiffs “make no allegation that the SSA DOGE team’s access will increase the risk of public disclosure.”
He said checking the personal data is crucial.
“For instance, a birth date of 1900 can be telltale evidence that an individual is probably deceased and should not still receive Social Security payments, while 15 names using the same Social Security number may also point to a problem,” he said.
