Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LITIGATION NEWS, TRENDS—Judge blocks DOGE access to Social Security data over privacy claims, (Apr 21, 2025)

By Tom Leithauser

DOGE’s activities at the SSA are on hold after the preliminary injunction.

Citing “thin” explanations for why personnel from the White House Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) should have “unbridled” access to Americans’ personally identifiable information (PII), a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction to block DOGE’s activities at the Social Security Administration (SSA).

“The objective to address fraud, waste, mismanagement, and bloat is laudable, and one that the American public presumably applauds and supports,” District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland said in her ruling in American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, et al., v. Social Security Administration, et al., No. 25-cv-00596 (D. Md. Feb. 21, 2025).

“Indeed, the taxpayers have every right to expect their government to make sure that their hard earned money is not squandered. However, the issue here is not the work that DOGE or the Agency want to do. The issue is about how they want to do the work. The DOGE Team seeks access to the PII that millions of Americans entrusted to SSA,” Judge Hollander said.

The Trump administration immediately appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Richmond) and petitioned Judge Hollander to stay the preliminary injunction. The judge has not yet ruled on the stay request.

Judge Hollander had already issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) that expired April 17. Her decision to issue the TRO was upheld by the Fourth Circuit.

But the administration claims it’s likely to succeed in now overturning the preliminary injunction because it won a similar case at the Fourth Circuit involving DOGE’s activities at the Treasury Department.

In the SSA case, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Alliance for Retired Americans, and American Federation of Teachers allege that their members would be irreparably harmed by DOGE’s access to SSA data.

DOGE has deployed 11 personnel to SSA to root out waste and fraud but has refused to identify all but two of the individuals “because of concern that the disclosure of their names would expose the individuals to harassment and thus invade their privacy,” Judge Hollander said, suggesting it was hypocritical for DOGE members to worry about their own personal privacy while they invaded the privacy of millions of Americans.

“Defendants clearly understand why guarding privacy, rather than waiting for harm to occur, is important. After all, that is precisely the reason why they have withheld the names of most of the members of the SSA DOGE Team,” she said.

“But, defendants have not shown the same level of care with the far more sensitive, confidential data of millions of Americans who entrusted their government with their personal and private information. The trust appears to have been violated,” she said.

She said the unions challenging DOGE’s SSA activities were likely to prevail on their claims that DOGE is violating the 1974 Privacy Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, the Constitution’s appointments clause, and SSA’s own policies regarding access to PII.

Absent the injunction, the plaintiffs would suffer irreparable injury, she asserted, citing the “concrete harm” that could result from “providing the DOGE Team with access to the medical records and sensitive financial information of millions of people.”

“Such unrestricted access to PII that SSA provided to the DOGE Team would be highly offensive to an objectively reasonable person,” she added.

“To be sure, rooting out possible fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the SSA is in the public interest,” Judge Hollander said. “But, that does not mean that the government can flout the law to do so. SSA is not exempt from the statutes Congress enacted to protect American citizens from overbroad and unnecessary access to their PII.”

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