The Trump administration has requested that the Supreme Court provide the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to the internal Social Security Administration systems, allowing them to audit the goings-on.

After a federal appeals court decision from last week blocked DOGE from accessing SSA networks due to the personal data for stored there, Solicitor General John Sauer submitted an emergency appeal Friday to the high court, as Red State reported.

In its application, the Trump administration requests an immediate administrative stay of the earlier order awaiting Supreme Court review.

“This emergency application presents a now-familiar theme: a district court has issued sweeping injunctive relief without legal authority to do so, in ways that inflict ongoing, irreparable harm on urgent federal priorities and stymie the Executive Branch’s functions,” Sauer wrote.

The gov's argument

The solicitor general made the argument that DOGE’s 18-month agenda “to improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and information technology (IT) systems” requires that it access agency systems and records for the purpose of “much-needed scrutiny.”

The Trump administration claims the district court's order to bar Elon Musk's department from hacking SSA networks was full of "glaring errors."

They claim that the Alliance for Retired Americans and numerous labor groups had no standing to sue because SSA personnel have access to their data with those protections.

“Respondents’ members furnished their information with the understanding that government employees could access it for a number of purposes, as those employees are permitted to do pursuant to various exceptions in the Privacy Act of 1974,” Sauer wrote.

DOGE's role

DOGE's access to federal agency IT systems, deemed “chaotic and haphazard” by a judge, has led to legal action, including instances involving the Treasury, OPM, Education, and others.

Unfettered access to critical public data by DOGE staff angered cybersecurity experts, with some comparing it to an ongoing data breach.

The Trump administration asserts that the injunction against DOGE on entering SSA systems “imposes ever-mounting irreparable harm as the district court continues to commandeer basic functions of the Executive Branch.”

“The injunction expresses the district court’s view that the Executive Branch cannot correct well-documented problems with its technological systems and combat fraud, waste, and abuse in federal programs using the personnel the Executive Branch has deemed most suited for the task,” Sauer wrote.

Questions about DOGE

It is unclear whether DOGE has found fraud, according to many mainstream reports, and Musk’s group faced criticism during the Trump administration for putting false claims on their “wall of receipts,” and other claimed cost-savings were actually fraud from years prior.

According to Elizabeth Laird, head of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Equity in Civic Technology program, giving DOGE “gratuitous access to highly sensitive personal data poses a grave threat to everyday people.”

“If DOGE gets a hold of this information, it opens the floodgates on a host of potential harms,” she continued. “It also normalizes a very dangerous practice for other federal agencies.”