The Supreme Court lifted a lower court order that prevented the Social Security Administration (SSA) from granting access to the agency's confidential data to subsidiaries of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The court, for On the other hand, it also stayed a lower court order requiring DOGE to hand over documents and records as part of a lawsuit alleging that the entity, like other government agencies, should be subject to federal records requests.

The ruling, a victory for the Trump administration, means that DOGE will be able to access the data of millions of Americans as part of what it has described as an effort to root out fraud and “modernize outdated systems,” but which critics say appears to be a fishing expedition.

The order granted an emergency request filed by the Trump administration asking the justices to lift an injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland.

And also, with the second ruling, that DOGE can continue to refuse to release documents, records, and information about its activities.

“We conclude that, under the current circumstances, the SSA may proceed to grant members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the records of the agency in question so that they can carry out their work,” the court wrote in the unsigned order.

Three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissenting opinion questioning the need for the court to intervene on an emergency basis.

“In essence, the ‘urgency’ underlying the government’s stay request lies in the mere fact that it cannot be bothered to wait for the judicial proceedings to be resolved before proceeding as it wishes,” the justice said.

The decision “will hand over highly sensitive data on millions of Americans to DOGE staff,” Brown Jackson concluded.

DOGE, the agency created by billionaire Elon Musk before his clash with President Donald Trump, says it wants to modernize systems and detect waste and fraud at the agency.

The data DOGE is seeking includes Social Security numbers, medical records, and tax and banking information for Social Security recipients.

Why the case is going to the Supreme Court as an emergency

The lawsuit challenging DOGE’s actions was filed by two unions: the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the American Federation of Teachers; as well as the Alliance for Retired Americans, which argued that allowing broader access to personal information would violate the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander ruled that DOGE did not need access to the specific data in question. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, Virginia, declined to block Hollander's decision, prompting the Trump administration to file an emergency request with the Supreme Court.