Conservatives on SCOTUS give DOGE the go-ahead

A one-two punch: DOGE gets access to your data, but the public is restricted from getting information about DOGE.

On Friday afternoon, heading into the weekend, the U.S. Supreme Court told the Trump administration that the non-department Department of Government Efficiency can more or less do what it wants.

In a pair of orders on the shadow docket, the court’s conservatives — over the objection of the liberal justices — allowed DOGE to access individualized, sensitive Social Security data for all Americans even as they prevented Americans from being able to access information about DOGE.

In the first case, a lower court order that blocked DOGE’s access to data from the Social Security Administration was stayed during litigation — meaning, DOGE gets access.

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for herself and Justice Sonia Sotomayor:

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. So it asks this Court to stay a lower court’s decision to place temporary and qualified limits on DOGE’s data access while litigation challenging DOGE’s authority to access the data is pending. … [O]nce again, this Court dons its emergency-responder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable power to fan the flames rather than extinguish them.

Justice Elena Kagan also would have rejected the Trump administration’s request, but she did not explain her reasons or join Jackson’s dissent.

The majority, meanwhile, barely provided any explanation. In a three-paragraph statement — which was issued neither per curiam (for the court) nor in the name of a specific justice — the court stated the basic facts, the standard for a stay, and its conclusion:

After review, we determine that the application of these factors in this case warrants granting the requested stay. We conclude that, under the present circumstances, 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.

That’s it, the entire analysis provided by the anonymous order of the Supreme Court. With that, the Supreme Court’s conservatives allowed DOGE access to any and every person’s Social Security data.

In the other case, the Supreme Court again granted the Trump administration’s request for a stay — and did so, again, over the objection of the liberal justices. This time, though, the conservative justices prevented access to DOGE’s data.

This order came in a case brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and it relates to whether DOGE is subject to public records requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) — or whether it is, in effect, exempted for now from such requests as a presidential record. As part of that determination, the district court issued an order that certain evidence be turned over. DOGE objected, and, on Friday, the Supreme Court held that even that minimal discovery was too much.

The court did more than simply issue a stay. The court announced that it was treating the request as a petition for a writ of certiorari — meaning, full review of the case on the merits — and issued a ruling immediately, with no further briefing or argument. This summary action can only be done with support from six justices, so we know that all of the conservative appointees were on board with this additional step.

What did the justices do with this action? They made new law restricting the public’s access to our government by expanding the scope of insulation the president and executive branch receive from even the minimal scrutiny provided by FOIA.

Here is the new restriction:

As such, the court continued, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit should “take appropriate action to narrow the April 15 discovery order consistent with this order“ when the case now returns to it.