By Lindsay Whitehurst | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 comes after a judge in Maryland restricted the team’s access under federal privacy laws.
Social Security 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 DOGE team needs access to target waste in the federal government, and asked the justices to put the lower court order on hold as the lawsuit over the issue plays out.
Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the judge’s restrictions disrupt DOGE’s urgent work and inappropriately interfere with executive-branch functions. “Left undisturbed, this preliminary injunction will only invite further judicial incursions into internal agency decision-making,” he wrote.
Musk 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.
An appeals court refused to immediately to 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 ruling from U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland that blocked DOGE from Social Security systems did allow staffers to access data that has been redacted or stripped of anything personally identifiable.
The appeal is the latest in a string of emergency applications to the nation’s highest court as the Trump administration faces about 200 lawsuits challenging various aspects of President Donald Trump’s sweeping conservative agenda.
