Two SCOTUS Wins on the Social Security Administration

President Trump had two big wins for Social Security this week.

The First Order

Social Security spends over $1.5 trillion annually. Given that, every dollar must be protected from fraud. The Supreme Court found in favor of DOGE having access to the records. It’s not snooping. It’s providing oversight.

SCOTUS lifted a lower court order preventing  DOGE staffers from accessing confidential data at the Social Security Administration.

The case is the Social Security Administration v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal employees. Judge Hollander issued an order barring DOGE from viewing SSA records. She cited the Federal Privacy Act as the basis for her decision.

The Supreme Court said the requirements for a stay of Hollarnder’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.” The usual justices dissented – Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson.

The Second Order

A second order formally blocks lower court orders requiring DOGE to respond to Freedom of Information requests over a pending lawsuit. We posted that yesterday.

DOGE was created on January 20 when President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14158, renaming the United States Digital Service, the United States DOGE service. It created an advisory body that recommends cost cutting measures for federal agencies. The order directed DOGE to implement the president’s agenda by modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued. That organization also known as CREW has been Soros-funded and is very left wing. Crew opposed the government’s emergency application to hold discovery, claiming DOGE is wielding “substantial independent authority.” However as the United States argued, DOGE is an advisory body body in the Executive Branch. It is not an agency. As such, it is exempt from the Freedom of Information act (FOIA0.

The Supreme Court wrote that “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.”

“Moreover,” they added, “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.”

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