The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily granted the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), once led by Elon Musk, full access to data held by the Social Security Administration, including Social Security numbers, medical and mental health records, and family court information.
In an unsigned order, the Court sided with a request from the Trump administration, overturning lower court rulings that had restricted the DOGE team’s access to the sensitive information, NPR reported.
The case was remanded to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond for a decision on the merits of the case.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the DOGE team, with the conservative supermajority backing the decision to grant temporary access to Social Security records. The Court’s three liberal justices dissented, saying they would have blocked the DOGE team’s access while the case continues to move through the appeals process.
Friday’s case began on day one of Trump’s second term, when he tasked DOGE with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
Acting Social Security Commissioner Michelle King initially refused to grant the DOGE team access to confidential Social Security records. Shortly afterward, she resigned rather than comply with the request. Her successor, Leland Dudek, reversed course and approved what critics have described as “unfettered access” to the SSA’s data systems for the DOGE team.
Friday’s ruling is the latest in a series of victories at the high court for constitutionalists. Earlier in the week, the court ruled unanimously in a number of cases, including one that denied Mexico’s attempt to sue American gun makers and another in favor of a straight woman who claimed she was discriminated against in the workplace.
Also Friday, the nation’s highest court declined to take up challenges of state and local lawsuits against oil companies that seek to compel them to compensate for alleged climate change-related damages.
Energy-producing states, oil companies, and industry groups filed two challenges to waves of climate lawsuits. Critics assert that the states are using these lawsuits to impose anti-fossil fuel policies. Oil companies would be forced to pay tens of billions to state and local governments — costs that will be passed on to consumers.
“Consumers are not helped by these cases, which seek to wipe products from store shelves and funnel money to left-wing causes,” said O.H. Skinner, executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, a consumer advocacy nonprofit.
“Here is hoping the targets of these lawsuits continue to fight these cases, as they have consistently prevailed in the final stages of review, and that is the only way for consumers not to be sacrificed before the left-wing onslaught here,” Skinner added.
The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, stated that not hearing the Honolulu case now could result in more lawsuits from activists seeking to become the nation’s energy regulators.
“I hope that the Court will hear the issue someday, for the sake of constitutional accountability and the public interest,” said Adam White, a senior fellow at the institute.
A week ago, the high court reversed lower court rulings and allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to remove the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian, and Nicaraguan migrants living in the United States, supporting the president’s push to increase deportations.
The court stayed Boston-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s order halting the administration’s move to end the immigration “parole” granted to 532,000 of these migrants by former President Joe Biden, potentially exposing many of them to immediate removal, while the case is heard in lower courts.
Immigration parole is a type of temporary authorization granted by American law to enter the nation for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” which allows grantees to live and work in the United States.
Biden claimed to have used it as part of his administration’s strategy for deterring illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border.