The Supreme Court, on Friday, for now gave the DOGE team launched by Elon Musk unfettered access to information collected by the Social Security Administration, data that includes Social Security numbers, medical and mental health records, and family court information.
In an unsigned order, the court, acting at the request of the Trump administration, temporarily overturned actions by two lower courts that had limited the DOGE team's access to sensitive private information at the Social Security Administration. The high court sent the case back to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond to rule on the merits.
The vote was 6 to 3, with the conservative super majority ruling in favor of the DOGE team. The court's three liberals said they would have ruled the other way, temporarily barring the DOGE team's access to Social Security records while the case proceeds through the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, writing for herself and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, blasted the majority for giving the DOGE team unfettered access to unredacted personal information "before the courts have time to assess whether DOGE's access is lawful." In essence, she said, the government's so-called "urgency" about gaining this access "is the mere fact that it cannot be bothered to wait for the litigation process to play out before proceeding as it wishes. "