A federal appeals court last week vacated a preliminary injunction that had restricted the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing sensitive data systems at the Social Security Administration (SSA), clearing the way for broader data access.
That decision was made by the majority of the 15-member panel for the Fourth Circuit, who deferred to the Supreme Court’s decision to stay the same injunction issued by a federal judge in April 2025.
The injunction was issued after a coalition of labor unions and retiree groups filed suit alleging violations of privacy laws and insufficient safeguards around sensitive government data. Under that order, personnel were allowed only limited access to SSA data, and only if the information was anonymized and handled by trained and vetted staff.
The Supreme Court intervened in June 2025 with an unsigned order staying the injunction, which effectively allowed DOGE broader, unrestricted access to SSA systems while litigation proceeds.
While the Fourth Circuit had initially sided with the labor unions and retirees in the case when the government requested a stay on the injunction in May 2025, in its latest order last week, the panel said it is bound by the Supreme Court’s decision.
Notably, neither the appeals court nor the Supreme Court decided whether DOGE’s actions were lawful. The court ruled that the coalition had not justified that emergency intervention was required to prevent irreparable harm, so the injunction could not stand.
The court also noted that the injury claimed by the suing coalition – which was a privacy violation – could potentially be addressed through money damages under the Privacy Act or a permanent injunction that requires deletion of improperly accessed data. Because of those options, the court said the law presumes a preliminary injunction is unnecessary.
More recent information could also lead to a different outcome, the majority noted. A new court filing in January corrected earlier testimony from an SSA official, which detailed unauthorized data sharing, including the use of an unapproved server and possible exposure of data on about 1,000 individuals.
“The government’s recent acknowledgments are alarming and raise serious questions about its earlier conduct before the district court,” wrote Justice Toby Heytens in a majority opinion.
Heytens noted that while the updated testimony is part of the official record for the case, the appeals court is to review the court record that was before the district court in the spring of last year, when the preliminary injunction was ordered.
Justice Robert King, in writing a dissenting opinion, said that, “From the corrected record, we now know that SSA and the other defendants provided patently false information to the district court in the preliminary injunction proceedings.”
“We thus know that the prior rulings in this matter … 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,” King added.
Beyond formal court filings, recent reports also found that a DOGE member who accessed information from SSA databases intended to share that information with a new employer in the private sector. Additional whistleblower claims made last summer by Chuck Borges, the former chief data officer at SSA, alleged systemic data security violations, unlimited access to highly sensitive environments, and potential violations of SSA security protocols and federal privacy laws.
The unfolding of the court proceedings and related reports have sparked concern among lawmakers, with Democratic and Republican legislators calling for a deeper investigation into Borges’ whistleblower allegations and how SSA secures its data.