A Supreme Court decision has cleared the way for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to access Social Security Administration (SSA) data, overturning a lower court’s preliminary injunction. The ruling, issued Friday, stems from a request by the Trump administration in May to pause the injunction.
The Court’s order stated, “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.”
This decision allows the DOGE team to move forward with its operations, which involve accessing certain SSA records.
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The ruling was not unanimous, with Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting. Justice Jackson, in a dissent joined by Justice Sotomayor, expressed strong concerns, writing that the majority was “jettisoning careful judicial decisionmaking and creating grave privacy risks for millions of Americans in the process.”
Jackson’s dissent emphasized the importance of adhering to lower court orders unless irreparable harm can be demonstrated.
She argued, “I would proceed without fear or favor to require DOGE and the Government to do what all other litigants must do to secure a stay from this Court: comply with lower court orders constraining their behavior unless and until they establish that irreparable harm will result such that equity requires a different course.”
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In a separate but related order, the Supreme Court also halted a lower court’s discovery order. This order would have compelled DOGE to provide certain materials to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), an organization that had sued DOGE to enforce its Freedom of Information Act request.
The Supreme Court’s decision to grant DOGE access to SSA data and to halt the discovery order in the CREW lawsuit marks a significant development in the ongoing legal battles surrounding government transparency and data access.
The dissenting justices’ concerns highlight the potential privacy implications for millions of Americans as DOGE proceeds with its work.
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