The Department of Government Efficiency will be permitted to access sensitive Social Security data while litigation over the matter continues, the U.S. Supreme Court said in an order on Friday.
Lifting an injunction that a lower court judge placed to protect the privacy of Americans, the conservative wing of the court agreed the DOGE staffers assigned to the Social Security Administration need to access the information to perform their jobs.
âWe 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,â the justices wrote in an unsigned order.
DOGE, set up by Elon Musk before he departed from the government, intended to find âwaste, fraud, and abuseâ in the federal government. Musk had previously characterized Social Security as a âPonzi scheme.â
Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the majority. Justice Elena Kagan said she would have denied the emergency application.
Writing for the dissenting justices, Jackson questioned the courtâs reasoning for intervening in the emergency request â an increasingly hot-button issue at the court.
âI would proceed without fear or favor to require DOGE and the Government to do what all other litigants must do to secure a stay from this Court: comply with lower court orders constraining their behavior unless and until they establish that irreparable harm will result such that equity requires a different course,â Jackson wrote.
âThe Court opts instead to relieve the Government of the standard obligations, jettisoning careful judicial decision making and creating grave privacy risks for millions of Americans in the process,â Jackson added.
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