Trump administration asks Supreme Court to let DOGE access Social Security systems

WASHINGTON AP The Trump administration sought the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for Elon Musk s Department of Executive Efficiency to access Social Prevention systems containing personal information on millions of Americans The urgency appeal is the first in a string of applications to the high court involving DOGE s swift-moving work across the federal regime It comes after a judge in Maryland restricted the band s access to Social Precaution under federal privacy laws The agency holds personal records on nearly everyone in the country including school records bank details salary information and health and mental healthcare records for disability recipients according to court documents The ruling body says the group demands access to target waste in the federal executive Musk now preparing to step back from his work with DOGE has been focused on Social Measure as an alleged hotbed of fraud The billionaire entrepreneur has described it as a Ponzi scheme and insisted that reducing waste in the operation is an crucial way to cut administration spending Solicitor General John Sauer argued Friday that the judge s restrictions disrupt DOGE s crucial work and inappropriately interfere with executive-branch decisions Left undisturbed this preliminary injunction will only invite further judicial incursions into internal agency decision-making he wrote He required the justices to block the order from U S District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland as the lawsuit plays out An appeals court previously refused to straightaway to lift the block on DOGE access though it split along ideological lines Conservative judges in the minority mentioned there s no evidence that the gang 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 Supreme Court questioned them for a response to the administration s appeal by May More than two dozen lawsuits have been filed over DOGE s work which has included deep cuts at federal agencies and large-scale layoffs Hollander uncovered that DOGE s efforts at Social Protection amounted to a fishing expedition based on little more than suspicion of fraud Her order does allow staffers to access input that has been made anonymous but the Trump administration has disclosed DOGE can t work effectively with those restrictions Elizabeth Laird with the nonprofit group Center for Democracy and Innovation noted wide-ranging access to sensitive personal material poses a serious threat If DOGE gets a hold of this information it opens the floodgates on a host of prospective harms It also normalizes a very dangerous practice for other federal agencies she commented The nation s court system has been ground zero for pushback to President Donald Trump s sweeping conservative agenda with about lawsuits filed challenging policies on everything from immigration to development to mass layoffs of federal workers Among those that have reached the Supreme Court so far the justices have handed down specific largely procedural rulings siding with the administration but have rejected the administration s broad arguments in other cases