“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 Supreme Court order said. The court also sided with the Trump administration in a different DOGE case, finding that a lower court’s discovery order requiring DOGE to provide information about its government cost-cutting operations was too broad (more on that ruling later in this article).
The data-access ruling was in a case filed by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the Alliance for Retired Americans; and American Federation of Teachers. US District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander previously issued a preliminary injunction, writing that DOGE “is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion.” The District of Maryland judge found that plaintiffs are likely to win their case alleging that the government violated the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit denied the Trump administration’s request to stay the preliminary injunction in a 9–6 vote. The Trump administration filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court last month, arguing that the injunction is causing “irreparable harm to the executive branch” and thwarting DOGE’s attempts to “eliminate waste and fraud.”
The Supreme Court’s unsigned ruling didn’t go into much detail, which isn’t unusual for decisions made on the emergency docket.
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