US SC gives Trump admin’s DOGE dept full authorisation to access social security data

US Supreme Court lets Trump-era DOGE access all citizens’ Social Security data, granting full sensitive data access. Read further on Dynamite News

Washington:  The US Supreme Court on Friday authorised officials from the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to access Social Security Administration data, giving it complete access to all sensitive private data of American citizens, reports Dynamite News correspondent.

The Supreme Court issued the authorisation after allowing an emergency petition filed by the administration of President Donald Trump to ask for a lifting of an injunction issued by a district judge in Maryland, who stated that privacy must be safeguarded, reports said.

“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 court said in a three-paragraph order.

The order didn’t, however, give the reasoning behind its ruling, which has become a very controversial issue.

The order was also challenged by the court’s three liberals — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — all of whom dissented. In an opinion joined by Sotomayor, Jackson said the court was “creating grave privacy risks for millions of Americans.”

In the SSA case, US Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court that “the government cannot eliminate waste and fraud if district courts bar the very agency personnel with expertise and the designated mission of curtailing such waste and fraud from performing their jobs.”

The DOGE department, which was created by the Trump administration and was until recently headed by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, before his resignation following his spat with the POTUS, while not an official government department, was designed specifically to monitor data fraud and misinformation.

The disputed data includes Social Security numbers, addresses, birth and marriage certificates, tax and earnings records, employment history, and bank and credit card information.

The lawsuit challenging DOGE's actions alleged that allowing broader access to personal information would violate a federal law called the Privacy Act, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act. U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander had ruled that DOGE had no legitimate need to access the specific data in question, according to Xinhua.

The 4th circuit court of appeals, based in Richmond, Virginia, declined to block Judge Hollander's decision, prompting the Trump administration to file an emergency request with the Supreme Court.

In a separate order issued Friday in another case involving DOGE, the Supreme Court granted an additional request filed by the Trump administration, allowing it to shield DOGE from Freedom of Information Act requests for the time being.