(AFP) – A divided US Supreme Court on Friday granted President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to the social security data of millions of Americans. The decision came after the Trump administration appealed to the top court to lift an April order by a district judge restricting DOGE access to Social Security Administration (SSA) records.
“SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work,” the top court said in a brief unsigned order. The three liberal justices on the Supreme Court dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson saying the move poses “grave privacy risks for millions of Americans.”
“Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, bank-account numbers, medical records — all of that, and more, is in the mix,” Jackson said. “The Government wants to give DOGE unfettered access to this personal, non-anonymized information right now — before the courts have time to assess whether DOGE’s access is lawful,” she said.
In her April ruling, District Judge Ellen Hollander banned DOGE staff from accessing data containing information that could personally identify Americans such as their social security numbers, medical history or bank records. Social security numbers are a key identifier for people in the United States, used to report earnings, establish eligibility for welfare and retirement benefits and other purposes.
Hollander said the SSA can only give redacted or anonymized records to DOGE employees who have completed background checks and training on federal laws, regulations and privacy policies. The case before Hollander was brought by a group of unions which argued that the SSA had opened its data systems to unauthorized personnel from DOGE “with disregard for the privacy” of millions of Americans.
DOGE, which has been tasked by Trump with slashing billions of dollars of government spending, was headed at the time by SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, who has since had a very public falling out with the president. Trump has been at loggerheads with the judiciary ever since he returned to the White House, venting his fury at court rulings at various levels that have frozen his executive orders on multiple issues.
© 2024 AFP
