The Supreme Court just gave a major win to President Donald Trump’s administration, allowing his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to the Social Security records of millions of Americans. The ruling follows a push by the Trump team to overturn a lower court decision that had blocked that access back in April.
In a brief unsigned order released Friday, the Court said, “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 decision wasn’t unanimous, though. The Court was divided, with the three liberal justices firmly in dissent.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson didn’t hold back in her criticism of the decision. “Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, bank-account numbers, medical records — all of that, and more, is in the mix,” she said. “The Government wants to give DOGE unfettered access to this personal, non-anonymised information right now — before the courts have time to assess whether DOGE’s access is lawful.”
The data in question includes some of the most sensitive personal information held by the Social Security Administration (SSA), and it’s not just about names and numbers. We’re talking about detailed financial and medical records — the kind of information most Americans assume is protected by law. Justice Jackson and others argue that the Supreme Court’s green light opens the door to serious privacy concerns, especially since the legality of DOGE’s access hasn’t even been fully reviewed yet.
The background of this case goes back to an April ruling by District Judge Ellen Hollander, who had blocked DOGE from accessing any information that could personally identify people — including Social Security numbers, medical histories, and bank records. Hollander had insisted that any access to this data must be tightly controlled, allowing only redacted or anonymised records to be shared and only with DOGE employees who had undergone background checks and privacy training.
That ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions, which argued that the SSA was giving DOGE unauthorized access to its systems “with disregard for the privacy” of millions of Americans. The unions claimed that DOGE personnel had not been properly vetted and were not following federal privacy guidelines.
DOGE was created by Trump to aggressively cut federal spending and was originally headed by none other than Elon Musk. At the time, Musk’s appointment raised plenty of eyebrows, and since then, his relationship with Trump has soured publicly and dramatically.
Still, the real concern here isn’t just about bureaucratic turf wars or political rivalries — it’s about what happens to your personal information. Social Security numbers in the US are like golden keys — they’re used for everything from applying for jobs to qualifying for government benefits. Letting an agency like DOGE have open access to that kind of data, without clear legal safeguards, has raised red flags for privacy advocates across the country.
As Trump continues to clash with the judiciary over executive orders and court rulings, this latest Supreme Court decision shows just how high the stakes really are — not just for government power, but for the privacy of everyday Americans.