A divided Supreme Court on June 6 ruled that DOGE could have complete access to the data of millions of Americans kept by the U.S. Social Security Administration. The court’s three liberal justices − Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson − disagreed with that decision.
The court paused an order issued by U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander of Maryland blocking DOGE from immediately getting broad access to the data, which includes Social Security numbers, medical and mental health information, tax return information, and citizenship records.
Judge Hollander said DOGE was intruding on the personal affairs of millions of Americans in a fishing expedition based on little more than suspicion. She limited DOGE’s access to the information while the courts assessed the legality of the Trump administration’s actions.
However, most of the judges presiding over the Supreme Court hearings said in a brief and unsigned decision that access was warranted now because the courts were likely to decide that DOGE could ultimately have the information.
They added that a delay would harm the administration’s reorganization efforts and was not in the public’s interest. The judges concluded that the SSA may give members of the SSA-DOGE team access to the agency records in question so that they could do their work.
Conservative lower-court judges said there was no evidence of DOGE mishandling personal information.
Jackson says the court ‘truly lost its moorings’ when deciding
Justice Ketanji Jackson said the government wanted to give DOGE unrestricted access to personal, non-anonymized information before the courts had time to assess whether DOGE’s access was lawful. She added that the court had “truly lost its moorings” when deciding what was worthy of emergency intervention by showing preferential treatment for the administration.
Justice Jackson said the court’s action created “grave privacy risks” for millions of Americans by giving “unfettered data access to DOGE” despite its failure to show any need or interest in complying with existing privacy safeguards, and all before it was known for sure whether federal law countenanced such access.
Justice Sotomayor seconded Jackson’s opinion, and Justice Kagan said she would have ruled against the administration.
“In essence, although other stay applicants must point to more than the annoyance of compliance with lower court orders they don’t like, the Government can approach the courtroom bar with nothing more than that and obtain relief from this Court nevertheless.”
–Ketanji Jackson, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
Solicitor General D. John Sauer also argued that the ruling was an example of federal judges overstepping their authority and trying to micromanage executive branch agencies.
The government claims DOGE needs access to SSA data to work
The Trump administration said DOGE needed access to SSA’s data to target and cut waste in the federal government. However, former DOGE boss Elon Musk has been focused on Social Security as an alleged hotbed of fraud. The billionaire investor described it as a “ Ponzi scheme ” and insisted that reducing waste in the program was a meaningful way to cut government spending.
Social Security’s Inspector General Gail Ennis previously disclosed $71.8 billion in improper payments from 2015 through 2022. Musk also said there were nearly 20 million people who were definitely dead and marked as alive in the Social Security database.
However, Liz Huston, a spokesperson for the White House, applauded the Supreme Court’s order granting DOGE access to SSA records. She said that the court allowing the Trump administration to carry out common sense efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse and modernize government information systems was a massive victory for the rule of law.
The DOGE victory came amid a messy breakup between the president and the world’s richest man that started shortly after Musk left the White House. The breakup included threats to cut government contracts and a call for the president to be impeached.
However, both men have previously said that DOGE will continue its efforts, although the future of its work would not be clear without Musk at the helm. The Tesla boss had previously suggested that $500 billion to $700 billion in waste must be cut.
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