Splitting along ideological lines in the apparent 6-3 ruling, the three liberal justices dissented. The majority said that Trump was likely to succeed in the litigation and would be injured if the justices didn’t intervene.
“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 majority wrote.
“In essence, the ‘urgency’ underlying the government’s stay application is the mere fact that it cannot be bothered to wait for the litigation process to play out before proceeding as it wishes,” [Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson] wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
DOGE officials want to modernize the federal government’s technology infrastructure and audit databases to identify waste, fraud and abuse. The Trump administration said to carry out that plan, officials would need access to the systems’ sensitive information.
“To assess the propriety of any payment, an analyst needs to know the details surrounding that payment, including information about the recipient of that payment, the amount of the payment, the payment’s purpose, and so forth,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote. “It is hard to fathom how such investigative work could be performed without access to the relevant payment records.”
Democracy Forward, which represents a coalition of unions in this case, called Friday “a sad day for our democracy and a scary day for millions of people.”
“This ruling will enable President Trump and DOGE’s affiliates to steal Americans’ private and personal data,” the group said in a statement.
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