Supreme Court Temporarily Restores DOGE Access to Social Security Records

The Supreme Court on Friday granted an emergency stay allowing the Department of Government Efficiency to secure sensitive Social Security Administration documents while a lower-court challenge is pending. The unsigned order supersedes a Maryland judge's injunction that had barred DOGE from seeing personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers, medical and financial data.

By a 6 - 3 conservative majority, the justices agreed that SSA has to "give members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records at issue so that those members can get their work done," reversing the district court's restriction. The case now returns to the Fourth Circuit for a full merits hearing.

In another ruling the court also suspended a lower-court mandate demanding DOGE submit internal documents under the Freedom of Information Act, shielding the task force from watchdog requests as litigation continues.

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan disagreed, warning that the decision presents "grave privacy risks for millions of Americans" due to the fact that it opens up total access prior to lower courts evaluating lawfulness.

Signed into existence by executive order on President Trump's inauguration day and led initially by Elon Musk, DOGE was to introduce modernity to federal systems, cut down on waste and check bureaucratic "bloat." Two unions and a support group sued to bar it from getting access to SSA data, asserting that it violated federal privacy statutes and put beneficiaries' confidentiality at risk.