### Supreme Court Grants Trump Administration Two Key Wins in DOGE Cases

In a sharply divided decision, the Supreme Court has momentarily aligned with the Trump administration in two pivotal cases involving the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This decision marks another incident where the Supreme Court has approved emergency requests from the Trump administration aimed at lifting lower court orders that had previously impeded his policies.

The first case allows DOGE representatives temporary access to sensitive Social Security Administration (SSA) data, including private information of millions of Americans, while the legal battle continues. The second case shields DOGE from the immediate obligation to release records to a watchdog group seeking transparency regarding its operations.

The court's three liberal justices—Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—expressed strong dissent. Jackson cautioned that the decision poses "grave privacy risks for millions of Americans" and criticized her colleagues for disregarding meticulous judicial decision-making.

Justice Jackson contended that the majority has been overly accommodating to the Trump administration, granting emergency requests even when lower courts have yet to rule on the legitimacy of those measures. Joined by Sotomayor, she highlighted that the court's intervention appears to favor the administration's impatience.

Following a federal judge’s ruling in Maryland that DOGE had possibly violated privacy laws by accessing the personal data of over 70 million Social Security beneficiaries, the administration sought urgent intervention from the Supreme Court. Despite the privacy concerns, the majority concluded that the SSA could allow DOGE to continue accessing the necessary records, factoring in public interest and the potential success of the underlying legal questions.

DOGE, launched by President Donald Trump and initially overseen by Elon Musk, aims to collect sensitive data across various government entities. Its objective is to identify and deport undocumented immigrants and root out alleged mismanagement within federal agencies. However, DOGE has been the subject of numerous lawsuits due to its controversial data access methods and Musk's influential role as an unconfirmed, temporary White House employee.

Legal challenges arose from labor unions and advocacy groups emphasizing the significant privacy and security risks posed by DOGE's data access. They argued that such actions contravene the federal Privacy Act, which restricts access to Social Security records to only those employees with legitimate job-related needs.

A Maryland-based federal judge, Ellen Lipton Hollander, temporarily restricted DOGE's access to SSA data, citing a lack of concrete evidence for their expansive requests. Although her order allowed for redacted or anonymized data to be shared, DOGE could still access non-anonymized data under particular court-enforced conditions. The Trump administration's appeal to block this order was declined by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer defended DOGE's actions, arguing that they were essential for government efficiency and modernization. Conversely, Democracy Forward, an advocacy group, countered that the access to sensitive data was an unprecedented overreach and vowed to continue their legal battle.

In a separate but related case, the justices decided to hold off on a lower court order mandating DOGE to release records and provide a deposition to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). CREW had filed a FOIA request asserting that DOGE was dismantling agencies with minimal transparency. Though Trump officials argued that DOGE, as a presidential advisory board, was not subject to FOIA, a federal judge ruled otherwise, prompting further legal scrutiny.

These Supreme Court decisions underscore the ongoing tension between the Trump administration's initiatives and the judiciary's role in balancing executive power against privacy rights and transparency.