By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to intervene in its bid to allow the Elon Musk-spearheaded Department of Government Efficiency unfettered access to the U.S. Social Security Administration data of millions of Americans.
The Justice Department asked the justices to put on hold a federal judge’s order that halted the agency from giving DOGE access after finding the data-sharing arrangement likely violated a federal privacy law.
Justice Department lawyers in their filing characterized the court’s order as judicial overreach.
“The district court is forcing the Executive Branch to stop employees charged with modernizing government information systems from accessing the data in those systems because, in the court’s judgment, those employees do not ‘need’ such access,” they wrote.
DOGE has swept through federal agencies as part of an effort by Trump and billionaire ally Musk to root out wasteful spending, slash jobs and dramatically overhaul the federal government.
The administration’s request arose from a lawsuit by two labor unions and an advocacy group. They sued to stop DOGE members from accessing some of the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) most sensitive data systems.
The Supreme Court directed the challengers to respond to the administration’s request by May 12.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander of Maryland, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, issued on April 17 an order extending her previously issued ban on DOGE members accessing the data. In her ruling, she found that DOGE had failed to explain why its stated mission required “unprecedented, unfettered access to virtually SSA’s entire data systems.”
“For some 90 years, SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records,” Hollander wrote. “This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation.”
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a divided ruling on April 30 declined to pause Hollander’s blocking of DOGE’s unlimited access to records.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Additional reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
