The Supreme Court on Friday lifted a lower court order blocking the Social Security Administration from granting access to the agency’s sensitive data to affiliates of the Department of Government Efficiency.
The court separately paused a lower court’s order that required DOGE to turn over documents as part of a lawsuit claiming the entity, like other government agencies, should be subject to federal records requests.
The ruling, a win for the Trump administration, means that DOGE will be able to access data on millions of Americans as part of what it has described as an effort to rout out fraud and “modernize outdated systems,” but that critics say appears to be a fishing expedition.
“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,” the court wrote in an unsigned order.
Three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.
The decision will “hand DOGE staffers the highly sensitive data of millions of Americans,” Jackson wrote.
“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,” she added.
The court’s order landed amid a public feud between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who once led DOGE as the key tool the White House was using to shrink and reshape the federal government.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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