Lambert here: “So-called” is load-bearing….
The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon handed a pair of victories to the Trump administration on the so-called emergency docket. Over the objections of the court’s three Democratic appointees, the justices cleared the way for members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to access the records of the Social Security Administration. And the court temporarily paused an order by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that would have required DOGE to provide information in a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act. Instead, the justices sent the dispute back to a federal appeals court with instructions for those judges to take another, more skeptical look at the order.
The plaintiffs urged the justices to stay out of the dispute. They stressed that Hollander’s order is limited in duration as well as in scope, because it merely prohibits DOGE team members from accessing SSA records if they have not yet undergone training and background checks. But, according to the plaintiffs, their members will be permanently harmed if Hollander’s order is lifted and their records are disclosed. The data stored by the SSA “is among the most sensitive in government records,” they wrote. And there is little that can be done to compensate them if their records are disclosed, they said, because “the core harm stems from the invasion of privacy itself.”
In an unsigned three-paragraph order, the Supreme Court granted the government’s request. The opinion noted that when deciding whether to put a lower court’s decision on hold, the court considers four criteria: whether the party seeking the stay is likely to prevail on the merits; whether it will be permanently harmed if the decision is not paused; whether the stay will “substantially injure” other parties to the dispute; and the public interest. When all of these factors are applied to this case, the court wrote, they lead to the conclusion that Hollander’s decision should be temporarily blocked while the government’s appeals continue – through the Supreme Court if necessary. “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 second order came in a dispute that arose after a government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed a request under FOIA for (among other things) communications between the DOGE administrator, Amy Gleason, and DOGE staff, as well as financial disclosures submitted by DOGE personnel.
In a two-page unsigned order on Friday, the justices sent the dispute back to the D.C. Circuit for another look. According to the court, the portions of Cooper’s discovery order that requires the government to disclose the content of DOGE’s recommendations within the executive branch, as well as whether those recommendations were followed, are too broad. Moreover, the court added, concerns about the separation of powers between the branches of government “counsel judicial deference and restraint in the context of discovery regarding internal Executive Branch communications.”
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