The Trump administration filed an emergency application on Friday asking the Supreme Court to restore DOGE’s access to Social Security Administration records. A lower-court order that prohibited DOGE’s access is causing “irreparable harm to the executive branch” and thwarting DOGE’s attempts to “eliminate waste and fraud,” US Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in the appeal.
“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,” Sauer told the Supreme Court. The preliminary injunction that is currently in place halted “the Executive Branch’s critically important efforts to improve its information-technology infrastructure and eliminate waste,” the brief said.
The appeal was lodged in a case filed by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the Alliance for Retired Americans; and American Federation of Teachers. Chief Justice John Roberts asked them to file a response to the US by May 12.
In March, the plaintiffs obtained an order that required the Social Security Administration (SSA) to block DOGE’s access to records. US District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander’s order said the DOGE entity created by President Donald Trump “is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion.”
Trump admin lost at appeals court
Hollander ordered the SSA to cut off DOGE’s access and ruled that Elon Musk and other DOGE members must “disgorge and delete all non-anonymized PII [personally identifiable information] data in their possession or under their control.” The District of Maryland judge found that Social Security officials “provided members of the SSA DOGE Team with unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans, including but not limited to Social Security numbers, medical records, mental health records, hospitalization records, drivers’ license numbers, bank and credit card information, tax information, income history, work history, birth and marriage certificates, and home and work addresses.”