The conservative Supreme Court majority has lifted a lower court stay and allowed DOGE to access the sensitive Social Security data of the American people. The government never made a case for why DOGE needs the un-anonymous data of the American people, but that didn’t seem to matter to the conservative majority.
It did matter greatly to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent:
In my view, granting the Government a stay on this plainly deficient showing of harm is also systemically corrosive. We have told everyone that it is “critical” that an applicant justify its request for a stay from this Court by showing that it “‘will be irreparably injured absent a stay.’” Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 418, 434 (2009). So the idea that the Government actually need not satisfy the irreparableharm burdens that other stay applicants have, nor wait for the courts to decide the merits of challenges to its allegedly unlawful conduct—as other litigants must—is not costless.
To accept this line of argument sends a troubling message: that this Court will allow departures from our stated legal standards and the basic norms of our judicial system (such as respect for lower court rulings and equal justice under law) for certain litigants. It says, in essence, that although other stay applicants must point to more than the annoyance of compliance with lower court orders they don’t like, the Government can approach the courtroom bar with nothing more than that and obtain relief from this Court nevertheless. It is particularly startling to think that the process of enforcing.
The lower courts are hard at work, expeditiously assessing whether federal law permits the SSA to give DOGE staffers unfettered access to Americans’ sensitive information. The only question before us today is what should happen to all of that data in the meantime. Two lower courts have said that DOGE staffers should have to comply with temporary safeguards on data access while the litigation is proceeding.
Meanwhile, here, the Government has plainly failed to meet the moment, as it has not shown that it will suffer any concrete or irreparable harm unless this Court immediately intervenes. But, today, the Court grants a stay permitting the Government to give unfettered data access to DOGE regardless—despite its failure to show any need or any interest in complying with existing privacy safeguards, and all before we know for sure whether federal law countenances such access.
The Court is thereby, unfortunately, suggesting that what would be an extraordinary request for everyone else is nothing more than an ordinary day on the docket for this Administration.
I would proceed without fear or favor to require DOGE and the Government to do what all other litigants must do to secure a stay from this Court: comply with lower court orders constraining their behavior unless and until they establish that irreparable harm will result such that equity requires a different course. The Court opts instead to relieve the Government of the standard obligations, jettisoning careful judicial decisionmaking and creating grave privacy risks for millions of Americans in the process.
Justice Jackson seems to be saying that the Supreme Court majority is setting up different rules for different litigants while also undercutting the work of the lower courts.
The Trump administration plans to use the Social Security data to round up and deport more immigrants. They will also use the data as a pretense to try to cut Social Security by finding more bogus claims of fraud.
This is a dark day and a giant step backward for government data privacy. For decades, the federal government has worked hard to protect the data of the American people.
The Supreme Court majority has thrown it all away so that Donald Trump can pursue his unpopular agenda.
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