Three justices dissented from the court’s two new rulings.
by Matthew Vadum | Epoch Times
The Supreme Court handed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) two big wins late on June 6 in its effort to reduce the size of the federal government.
The nation’s highest court issued the two unsigned rulings at the same time.
The first order lifts a lower court order preventing DOGE staffers from accessing confidential data at the Social Security Administration (SSA).
The second order formally blocks lower court orders requiring DOGE to respond to freedom of information requests in a pending lawsuit.
DOGE came about on Jan. 20 when President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14158, renaming the United States Digital Service (USDS) as the United States DOGE Service and creating an advisory body that recommends cost-cutting measures for federal agencies.
The executive order directed the entity to “implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
The first order came in a case known as Social Security Administration v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.
Ellen Lipton Hollander, a Maryland-based federal district judge, issued an order on March 20 preventing DOGE from viewing SSA records, stating such access violates the federal Privacy Act.
“The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” the judge wrote in granting a temporary restraining order against the federal government.
Hollander directed DOGE to delete any personally identifiable data in its possession. On April 17, Hollander upgraded the temporary restraining order to a preliminary injunction.
On April 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit voted 9–6 to maintain Hollander’s order while the appeal process continues.
The Supreme Court said the requirements for a stay of Hollander’s preliminary injunction have been met and concluded 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.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
Kagan said she would deny the emergency application. She did not provide reasons for her vote.
Jackson issued a dissenting opinion, which Sotomayor joined.
Jackson wrote that the Supreme Court is allowing the Social Security Administration “to hand DOGE staffers the highly sensitive data of millions of Americans.”
Here, the court is acting with undue haste, as it “dons its emergency-responder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable power to fan the flames rather than extinguish them,” the justice wrote.
Equitable powers are used by courts to assure fair results in cases where a rigid application of the law would result in an injustice being done.
The second order, in U.S. DOGE Service v. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), came after Chief Justice John Roberts on May 23 issued an administrative stay temporarily blocking lower court orders that allowed discovery to proceed.
In the discovery process, evidence is gathered through depositions and other means.
CREW opposed the government’s emergency application to halt discovery, arguing that DOGE is wielding “substantial independent authority,” which effectively makes it an agency that is subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Federal Records Act, according to a brief it filed.
The Freedom of Information Act, which took effect in 1966, allows individuals “to obtain access to government information in executive branch agency records,” subject to certain exceptions.
“FOIA applies to records created by federal agencies and does not cover records held by Congress, the courts, or state and local government agencies,” a government website says.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order in April granting discovery in the litigation. In May, the court issued an order scheduling discovery.
Also in May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to block the orders, according to the government’s emergency application filed with the Supreme Court.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued in the application that DOGE is an advisory body located in the executive branch—as opposed to an agency—so it “is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).”
Sauer wrote that despite DOGE’s status as an advisory body, the district court ordered it “to submit to sweeping, intrusive discovery just to determine if USDS is subject to FOIA in the first place.”
Sauer said the district court “turns FOIA on its head, effectively giving [CREW] a win on the merits of its FOIA suit under the guise of figuring out whether FOIA even applies.”
The Supreme Court vacated the D.C. Circuit’s decision not to halt discovery and remanded the case to that court “for further consideration in light of this order.”
The high court found that the district court’s April discovery order that compelled the government to disclose “intra-Executive Branch USDS recommendations and whether those recommendations were followed” swept too broadly.
“Any inquiry into whether an entity is an agency for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act cannot turn on the entity’s ability to persuade,” the Supreme Court said.
Moreover, the doctrine of separation of powers requires the judiciary to defer to the Executive Branch with respect to the prospect of internal government communications being disclosed in the discovery process, the high court said.
The separation of powers is a constitutional doctrine that divides the government into three branches to prevent any single branch from accumulating too much power.