DOGE Scores Big Social Security Win From Supreme Court

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) scored major back-to-back victories in June as the Supreme Court lifted a federal judge’s order blocking the Department from accessing sensitive data in the Social Security Administration’s systems. Knewz.com has learned that in a simultaneous emergency ruling, the Supreme Court sided with DOGE, reversing a lower court order that would have forced the department to hand over internal documents as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

Although the relationship between President Donald Trump and former DOGE head Elon Musk soured over the month, the Trump administration continues to defend the department’s work in the courts. The Social Security case centered on whether DOGE was allowed to legally access the Social Security Administration’s systems containing highly sensitive information including Social Security numbers, medical and mental health records, bank records and earnings data. Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander had previously ruled that DOGE employees could only access redacted or anonymized data after undergoing specific training for those systems. The federal judge wrote that DOGE’s efforts to slim down the federal bureaucracy weren’t the problem at hand but rather “how they want to do the work.”

According to reports, the challenge to DOGE’s ability to snoop around the Social Security Administration’s systems came from a coalition of government unions, supported by the liberal legal group Democracy Forward. However, the majority of the Supreme Court sided with DOGE and lifted Judge Hollander’s order, although they did not explain the reasoning. The Court only said that the “SSA [Social Security Administration] may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency record” under the present circumstances. Solicitor General D. John Sauer had argued that the initial ruling by Judge Hollander “undermined” DOGE’s objective to eradicate “waste and fraud” and streamline and modernize the government.

“The government cannot eliminate waste and fraud if district courts bar the very agency personnel with expertise and the designated mission of curtailing such waste and fraud from performing their jobs,” Sauer wrote. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined in dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, stated that the Trump administration failed to meet the court’s high bar for emergency relief and criticized her colleagues for “jettisoning careful judicial decision-making.” Wrote Justice Jackson, “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. … 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.” Simultaneously, the Supreme Court also reversed U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s order that would have required DOGE to turn over internal documents and submit its acting administrator, Amy Gleason, for deposition in a FOIA lawsuit.

The Barack Obama-appointed judge had ruled that DOGE’s internal recommendations and communications could be subject to FOIA if the department was functioning as a “federal agency.” However, Solicitor General Sauer argued that the Department is merely a “presidential advisory body” and therefore, not an agency bound by FOIA. Sauer added that Cooper’s order would “significantly distract” from DOGE’s mission to identify and eliminate “fraud, waste and abuse” within the federal government, calling the discovery ordered “extraordinarily overbroad and intrusive.” The reversal of Judge Cooper’s order marks a victory for the Trump administration’s efforts to keep the inner workings of DOGE in the dark.

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