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US supreme court rules Doge can access social security data during legal challenge US supreme court rules Doge can access social security data during legal challenge
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Key player in Trump’s drive to slash federal workforce keeps access to sensitive records including family court and mental health recordsKey player in Trump’s drive to slash federal workforce keeps access to sensitive records including family court and mental health records
The US supreme court on Friday permitted the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), a key player in Donald Trump’s drive to slash the federal workforce, broad access to the personal information of millions of Americans in Social Security Administration data systems while a legal challenge plays out. The US supreme court on Friday allowed members of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to access the sensitive records kept by the Social Security Administration while legal challenges play out.
At the request of the justice department, the justices put on hold Maryland-based US district judge Ellen Hollander’s order that had largely blocked Doge’s access to “personally identifiable information” in data such as medical and financial records while litigation proceeds in a lower court. Hollander found that allowing Doge unfettered access likely would violate a federal privacy law. The conservative-majority court, in an unsigned order with the three liberal justices dissenting, sided with the Trump administration in the appeal involving Doge, the team spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk.
The court’s brief, unsigned order did not provide a rationale for siding with Doge. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices dissented. The high court agreed to lift an injunction issued by a federal district court judge in Maryland, writing that the social security agency “may proceed” to grant members of the Doge team “access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work”.
Doge swept through federal agencies as part of the Republican president’s effort, spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk, to eliminate federal jobs, downsize and reshape the US government and root out what they see as wasteful spending. Musk formally ended his government work on 30 May. Doge, which was created by executive order and is not an official government department, slashed its way through federal agencies as part of its mission to end the “tyranny of the bureaucracy”. Musk stepped back from his government work last month and is now publicly feuding with Trump.
Two labor unions and an advocacy group sued to stop Doge from accessing sensitive data at the SSA, including social security numbers, bank account data, tax information, earnings history and immigration records. The Trump administration said Doge needed access to the information to fulfill its goal of targeting waste and fraud in the federal government and saving taxpayer money.
The agency is a major provider of government benefits, sending checks each month to more than 70 million recipients, including retirees and disabled Americans. Musk had identified social security as an area rife with fraud. The billionaire tech executive once said social security – which provides benefits to more than 70 million Americans, including retirees and disabled Americans – was “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time”. He and Trump have repeated inaccurate claims that millions of people born over a century ago are collecting social security checks.
In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued that the SSA had been “ransacked” and that Doge members had been installed without proper vetting or training and had demanded access to some of the agency’s most sensitive data systems. “Today, the court grants a stay permitting the government to give 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,” Jackson wrote in her dissent.
Hollander in a 17 April ruling found that Doge had failed to explain why its stated mission required “unprecedented, unfettered access to virtually SSA’s entire data systems”. “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.”
“For some 90 years, SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records,” Hollander wrote. “This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation.” The lawsuit was brought by labor unions and an advocacy group, which sued to block Doge from accessing the agency’s databases, which store the personal information of nearly every American, including financial information, medical history and school records.
Hollander issued a preliminary injunction that prohibited Doge staffers and anyone working with them from accessing data containing personal information, with narrow exceptions. The judge’s ruling did allow Doge affiliates to access data that had been stripped of private information as long as those seeking access had gone through the proper training and passed background checks. “This is a sad day for our democracy and a scary day for millions of people,” Democracy Forward, which represents the plaintiffs, said. “This ruling will enable President Trump and Doge’s affiliates to steal Americans’ private and personal data. Elon Musk may have left Washington DC, but his impact continues to harm millions of people.
Hollander also ordered Doge affiliates to “disgorge and delete” any personal information already in their possession. “We will continue to use every legal tool at our disposal to keep unelected bureaucrats from misusing the public’s most sensitive data as this case moves forward.”
Based in Richmond, Virginia, the fourth US circuit court of appeals in a 9-6 vote declined on 30 April to pause Hollander’s block on Doge’s unlimited access to SSA records. In April, Judge Ellen Hollander, of the US district court for Maryland, imposed strict restrictions on access to the records, citing the agency’s “abiding commitment to the privacy and confidentiality of the personal information entrusted to it by the American people”.
Justice department lawyers in their supreme court filing characterized Hollander’s order as judicial overreach. “For some 90 years, [the] SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records,” she wrote. “This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation.”
“The district court is forcing the executive branch to stop employees charged with modernizing government information systems from accessing the data in those systems because, in the court’s judgment, those employees do not ‘need’ such access,” they wrote. Her order directed Doge employees, and social security employees working with them, to “disgorge and delete” any personal information already in their possession.
The six dissenting judges wrote that the case should have been treated the same as one in which a fourth circuit panel ruled 2-1 to allow Doge to access data at the US treasury and education departments and the office of personnel management. News that the Doge team had sought access to the data raised alarms among federal workers, privacy advocates and Democrats who charged that Musk could use the information to benefit his private companies. At town halls, many constituents demanded their elected leaders protect their data from Doge.
In a concurring opinion, seven judges who ruled against Doge wrote that the case involving social security data was “substantially stronger” with “vastly greater stakes”, citing “detailed and profoundly sensitive Social Security records”, such as family court and school records of children, mental health treatment records and credit card information.