DOGE at the Gates of Privacy

June 9th, 2025

Dhruv Arun

In a major decision on Friday, the Supreme Court gave the DOGE team, launched by Elon Musk, unfettered access to information collected by the Social Security Administration, data that includes Social Security numbers, medical and mental health records, and family court information. The justices granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to lift a lower-court order that had blocked a DOGE team assigned to the Social Security Administration from viewing or obtaining personal information in the agency’s systems. However, the court’s brief, unsigned order did not provide a rationale for siding with DOGE. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices dissented from the order. In a 10-page dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision creates “grave privacy risks for millions of Americans [and that] with today’s decision, it seems as if the court has truly lost its moorings.”

Meanwhile, DOGE, set up by billionaire Elon Musk before his falling out with President Donald Trump, says it wants to modernize systems and detect waste and fraud at the agency. The data it seeks includes Social Security numbers, medical records, and tax and banking information. According to experts, the personal data the Social Security Administration has on most Americans runs “from cradle to grave,” said Kathleen Romig, who used to work at the SSA.

In response to the ruling, a coalition of groups who sued over DOGE’s access said in a statement that the high court’s ruling “will enable President Trump and DOGE’s affiliates to steal Americans’ private and personal data.”

They also stated that “Elon Musk may have left Washington, D.C., but his impact continues to harm millions of people. We will continue to use every legal tool at our disposal to keep unelected bureaucrats from misusing the public’s most sensitive data as this case moves forward.”

From the administration’s perspective, Trump administration lawyers claimed the DOGE team members needed unfettered access to Social Security’s data in order to detect and halt fraudulent payments (Politico.) On the other hand, U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander had ruled that DOGE had no need of the specific data at issue (NBC.) She concluded that the access granted to the cost-cutting team violated the Privacy Act, because agency officials did not show that it was necessary to include identifying information in order to carry out the search for fraudulent payments.

In her dissent, Justice Jackson argued that the government had provided “next to nothing” to justify the urgency of lifting the lower court’s restrictions on DOGE. She wrote that “the government wants to give DOGE unfettered access to this personal, non-anonymized information right now, before the courts have time to assess whether DOGE’s access is lawful.” She added, “Once again, this court dons its emergency responder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable power to fan the flames rather than extinguish them.”

The SSA holds extensive data, including names, Social Security numbers, birth details, addresses, marital and parental status, earnings, bank info, immigration and work status, and more. The agency serves over 70 million people with benefits each month. Access to these systems has historically been tightly restricted. The lawsuit argued that expanding access violates the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. After DOGE arrived at SSA, Commissioner Michelle King resigned when DOGE staffers tried to access sensitive records. Her successor, Leland Dudek, gave DOGE what critics called “unfettered access.” Separately, the Supreme Court also blocked lower court orders requiring DOGE to turn over internal records to a watchdog group. In another Friday order, the Court granted a second Trump administration request related to DOGE. Previously, the 4th Circuit declined to pause Judge Hollander’s ruling blocking DOGE’s access. Advocacy groups responded, “This is a sad day for our democracy and a scary day for millions of people.”