The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court just gave the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) the green light to access data at the Social Security Administration (SSA). 

The Daily Caller reports that the justices issued the decision on Friday.

The court's decision can be read here.

🚨 JUST IN: The U.S. Supreme Court granted the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) full access to the Social Security Administration’s database, containing sensitive personal data on millions of Americans, to support its mission of identifying waste, fraud, and abuse in… pic.twitter.com/a0Q3AIqkeT

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Background

DOGE is the group that President Donald Trump has tasked with finding and eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse from within the government.

To this end, DOGE has sought access to many government departments and agencies. Some have been more cooperative than others. The SSA would be one example. It has been using the legal system to try to deny DOGE access, and it has been successful.

Fox News reports:

Maryland U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander previously ruled that DOGE’s efforts with Social Security were a "fishing expedition" based on "little more than suspicion" of fraud. She did allow some access, however, to anonymous data for DOGE workers who had gone through background checks.

This decision was immediately appealed. Fox continues, "An appeals court didn't immediately lift the block, with dissenting conservative judges saying there’s no evidence that DOGE has done any 'targeted snooping' or exposed personal information."

This is the main arguments that the SSA is making, namely that allowing DOGE to access the SSA would violate federal privacy laws, as it would potentially allow DOGE to see citizens' social security numbers, tax returns, medical information, and more.

The latest

Now, the Supreme Court has stepped in, and it is essentially allowing DOGE to proceed.

"We conclude that, under the present circumstances, 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 court ruled.

Not all members of the court agreed. Among the dissenters were Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor - the courts most liberal contingent.

Jackson, who wrote the dissent, argued that the majority is "jettisoning careful judicial decisionmaking and creating grave privacy risks for millions of Americans in the process," adding:

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.

Nonetheless, the court's majority has given DOGE the green light, and we'll have to see what the group finds at the SSA.