Appeals court removes limits on DOGE access to SSA data despite ‘alarming’ revelations

A federal appeals court vacated a court order limiting the Department of Government Efficiency’s access to sensitive data at the Social Security Administration on Friday, handing the Trump administration a victory in its quest to reverse the restrictions. 

A majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said that three organizations suing SSA weren’t able to show that irreparable harm was likely without action from the court, reversing a lower court’s preliminary injunction from last year that had blocked DOGE from accessing data. 

This follows a January court filing in which the government conceded that DOGE associates may have improperly accessed sensitive data at the agency.

A DOGE employee signed an agreement to share SSA data with an unnamed political advocacy group that wanted to overturn election results in certain states, the government said in a correction to the record. That filing also revealed that much of DOGE’s data access occurred outside of official protocols — and that SSA still doesn’t know the full scope of DOGE’s data access and sharing, which included the use of an unauthorized server.

“The government’s recent acknowledgments are alarming and raise serious questions about its earlier conduct before the district court,” the Friday opinion reads. 

The court called recent reports about another SSA whistleblower accusing an ex-DOGE associate of planning to take sensitive data on U.S. citizens with him to his job at a government contractor “even more alarming” in its majority decision written by Judge Toby Heytens.

The court made its decision to reverse the limit on SSA’s data access based on the record before the district court at the time it issued the preliminary injunction, Heytens wrote, noting that the new revelations can be considered by the lower court down the line.

The Supreme Court already temporarily gave DOGE access to SSA data again last summer in an unsigned decision. On Friday, the Fourth Circuit deferred to the Supreme Court and sent the case back to the district court.

Judge Robert King argued in a partial dissent that the court should have assessed the merits of the preliminary injunction on the basis of the new, corrected record. 

“We now know that SSA and the other defendants provided patently false information to the district court in the preliminary injunction proceedings,” wrote King. He said prior rulings were “rendered on a materially erroneous record. And we know that, going forward, we should not accord the defendants any benefit of the doubt or readily trust in anything they say.”

The government also admitted in its correction to the record that two DOGE associates were also granted access to sensitive data after a court issued a temporary restraining order last March blocking DOGE’s access to SSA data. 

SSA houses sensitive information like the addresses, Social Security numbers and dates of birth of millions of Americans. 

The coalition of unions and retiree advocates suing SSA argues that DOGE got unauthorized access to this information, violating privacy laws and putting Americans at risk.

“We look forward to continuing this case in the district court, seeking discovery, and getting to the bottom of this harmful conduct, including demonstrating the harms of DOGE’s actions that now appear to extend to the integrity of U.S. elections,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which is representing the plaintiffs in the case.