The Supreme Court on Friday handed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) two major victories in its expanding legal battle over drastic efforts to reshape the federal bureaucracy.
In two separate emergency rulings issued simultaneously, the court lifted a block on DOGE personnel accessing sensitive Social Security Administration (SSA) systems and wiped a ruling forcing DOGE to turn over discovery in a records lawsuit.
Both rulings appeared to be along the Supreme Court’s ideological lines, with the court’s three Democrat-appointed justices publicly dissenting.
The decisions come as President Trump’s relationship with billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk, the face of DOGE for months, publicly imploded Thursday. His administration continues to defend DOGE’s work in the courts.
Social Security
In the Social Security case, the justices lifted a Maryland-based federal judge’s order blocking DOGE from snooping around the SSA’s systems that contain personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers, medical and mental health records, bank data, and earnings history.
The majority did not explain the reasoning, only saying that the “SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency record” under the present circumstances.
In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said the Trump administration hadn’t met the court’s high bar for emergency relief, accusing her colleagues of “jettisoning careful judicial decisionmaking.”
“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,” Jackson wrote.
“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,” she continued.
Justice Elena Kagan also dissented, but she did not join the duo’s opinion. --->READ MORE HERE
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that President Trump’s team of cost-cutters at the Department of Government Efficiency can access Social Security systems containing the personal information of millions of Americans.
The high court’s ruling overturns a preliminary injunction issued in April by a Maryland federal judge blocking DOGE staffers attached to the Social Security Administration (SSA) from accessing non-anonymized data and making any changes to the computer code or software used by the agency.
The legal victory is a first for the Trump administration at the Supreme Court in a case involving the team formerly led by billionaire Elon Musk.
“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,” read the majority opinion.
The court noted that it considered “where the public interest lies,” as well as whether the Trump administration would be likely to succeed on the merit and be irreparably injured without a stay, and whether the plaintiffs would be substantially harmed by overturning the injunction.
The case was brought by a group of labor unions and retirees alleging that DOGE activities at SSA violated privacy laws and presented a massive information security risk.
The high court’s three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — opposed the majority ruling
“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,” Jackson and Sotomayor wrote in dissent. --->READ MORE HERE
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