“Why would Musk even ask to look into information regarding Social Security? What gives him any legal right to that information?”
— Jaqueline Miller
Hi Jaqueline,
Like other Department of Government Efficiency activities, this stems from Elon Musk’s stated goal of rooting out fraud and promoting efficiency.
But when it comes to DOGE’s legal right to sensitive Social Security data, a federal judge seemed to share your question — yet, she didn’t get a good answer.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander wrote in a lengthy ruling last month that the government couldn’t explain why DOGE needs access to Americans’ personal information to accomplish its mission. “This intrusion into the personal affairs of millions of Americans — absent an adequate explanation for the need to do so — is not in the public interest,” she wrote.
Hollander said the problem wasn’t what DOGE wants to do but how it wants to do it — namely, with Americans’ private information entrusted to the Social Security Administration. “For some 90 years, SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records. This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation,” she wrote in granting a preliminary injunction to plaintiffs who brought a lawsuit against the government.
The Obama-appointed judge said the SSA could still give DOGE access to redacted or anonymized records, so long as anyone accessing that data is appropriately trained and vetted.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit declined to halt Hollander’s injunction, and the Trump administration brought an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court last week. The government has frequently filed such appeals in Donald Trump’s second term, as judges find legal issues with various aspects of his agenda.
Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, cast the reason for the barrage of urgent appeals differently. “This emergency application presents a now-familiar theme: a district court has issued sweeping injunctive relief without legal authority to do so, in ways that inflict ongoing, irreparable harm on urgent federal priorities and stymie the Executive Branch’s functions,” he wrote. When it comes to this Social Security case specifically, Sauer said 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.”
Chief Justice John Roberts (who handles emergency litigation from the 4th Circuit) asked for a written response from the plaintiffs by Monday afternoon. The government can then file a final reply brief, after which we can hear from the court anytime about whether it will upend Hollander’s injunction.
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