In the United States, the Supreme Court authorizes DOGE to access sensitive Social Security data

The conservative-majority US Supreme Court on Friday, June 6, authorized the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), launched by billionaire Elon Musk, to access personal data held by Social Security until further notice.

By a majority of six to three, with conservative justices against progressives, the Court also overturned a lower court ruling ordering DOGE, which is tasked with drastically cutting public spending, to make its records public.

The decision came after a lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, citing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The transparency law requires federal agencies to release their documents to anyone who requests them, but the Trump administration maintains that DOGE is not an agency.

In the other ruling issued Friday, the Supreme Court suspended until an appeals court rules on lower court decisions limiting DOGE's access to personal data from the US Social Security (SSA) and thus the exploitation of confidential information, such as medical records, bank statements or pay stubs.

The Court did not provide a reason for this ruling. But liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a written dissent joined by her colleague, Sonia Sotomayor, deplored the fact that it was thus "emergency" allowing the SSA to "hand over the highly sensitive data of millions of Americans to DOGE agents" instead of giving lower courts time to determine whether such access was lawful.

The Trump administration claims that widespread fraud is undermining the SSA, including claims that it has been improperly paying pensions to millions of people who have been dead for years.