The Trump administration on Friday called on the Supreme Court to clarify how Elon Musk’s government efficiency can contain personal data to millions of Americans.
The emergency appeal is the first in a series of applications to the High Court that involves the rapid operation of doges across the federal government.
This comes after an order from a Maryland judge restricted access to social security under federal privacy laws.
According to court documents, Social Security maintains personal records for almost everyone in the country, including school records, bank details, pay information and medical and mental health records for people with disabilities.
The government says the DOGE team needs to access federal target waste. Currently preparing to step back from working with Doge, Musk is focusing on Social Security as a suspect in fraud. The billionaire entrepreneur described it as the “Ponzi Plan” and argued that reducing waste in the program was an important way to reduce government spending.
Attorney D. John Sauer on Friday argued that judge restrictions disrupt the key work of Kuzi and inappropriately interfered with the decisions of the administrators. “Uninterrupted, this provisional injunction only invites further judicial invasion into internal agency decisions,” he wrote.
He asked the judicial authorities to block an order from US District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland, where the lawsuit was being developed.
The Court of Appeals immediately refused to immediately unblock Doge Access, although split along the ideological boundaries. A conservative minority judge said there was no evidence that the team had “targeted snooping” or exposed personal information.
The lawsuit was originally filed by a group of trade unions and a group of retirees. The Supreme Court sought a response to the administration’s appeal by May 12th.
More than 20 lawsuits have been filed over Doge’s work. This includes deep cuts in federal agencies and large layoffs.
Hollander discovered that Doge’s Social Security efforts would be based on “more than doubt” of fraud.
Her orders allow staff to access anonymous data, but the Trump administration says Doge cannot work effectively with these restrictions.
The country’s court system is zero on the ground due to a pushback to President Trump’s sweeping, conservative agenda, with around 200 lawsuits posing all sorts of challenging policies, from immigration to education to massive layoffs of federal workers.
So far, if it reached the Supreme Court, the judiciary handed over some of the mostly procedural rulings above the administration, but rejected the broader arguments of the government in other cases.
Whitehurst writes for the Associated Press.
