The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to access Social Security systems containing personal data on millions of Americans. The emergency appeal is the first in a string of applications to the high court involving DOGE's swift-moving work across the federal government and comes after a judge in Maryland restricted the team's access to Social Security under federal privacy laws. The agency holds personal records on nearly everyone in the country, including school records, bank details, salary information, and medical and mental health records for disability recipients, according to court documents.
The government says the team needs access to target waste in the federal government, per the AP. Musk, now preparing to step back from his work with DOGE, has been focused on Social Security as an alleged hotbed of fraud, describing it as a "Ponzi scheme" and insisting that reducing waste in the program is an important way to cut government spending. Solicitor General John Sauer argued Friday that the judge's restrictions disrupt DOGE's important work and inappropriately interfere with executive-branch decisions. He asked the justices to block the order from US District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland as the lawsuit plays out.
An appeals court previously refused to immediately lift the block on DOGE access, though it split along ideological lines. Conservative judges in the minority said there's no evidence that the team has done any "targeted snooping" or exposed personal information. The lawsuit was originally filed by a group of labor unions and retirees represented by the group Democracy Forward. The Supreme Court asked them for a response to the administration's appeal by May 12. More than two dozen lawsuits have been filed over DOGE's work, which has included deep cuts at federal agencies and large-scale layoffs.
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Hollander found that DOGE's efforts at Social Security amounted to a "fishing expedition" based on "little more than suspicion" of fraud. Elizabeth Laird with the nonprofit group Center for Democracy and Technology said wide-ranging access to sensitive personal data poses a serious threat. "If DOGE gets ahold of this information, it opens the floodgates on a host of potential harms," she notes.
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