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The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on May 2, 2025, to restore DOGE-affiliated personnel’s access to Social Security Administration records after two lower-court setbacks. The Supreme Court granted a temporary stay on June 6, 2025. Later, on April 10, 2026, the Fourth Circuit sitting en banc vacated the preliminary injunction and sent the case back to the district court. Those rulings changed the case’s procedural posture; they do not establish how much access DOGE ultimately had or resolve every issue in the lawsuit.
What the May 2025 request was about
The lawsuit was brought by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Alliance for Retired Americans, and the American Federation of Teachers. They challenged the Social Security Administration’s decision to give DOGE-affiliated personnel access to SSA records. The dispute concerned access to records containing personally identifiable, confidential, and sensitive information—not Social Security benefits policy generally. The Supreme Court docket and the Fourth Circuit case materials describe the litigation and the records at issue.
The government said access was needed to modernize information systems and identify waste, fraud, and abuse. That was the administration’s stated rationale, not a judicial finding that DOGE had uncovered fraud. The plaintiffs challenged the breadth and legality of the access. The government’s Supreme Court filing sets out its arguments.
How the case moved through the courts
| Date and court | Action | What it meant |
|---|---|---|
| April 17, 2025 — U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland | Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander issued a preliminary injunction restricting access. | The injunction imposed limits while the case proceeded; it was not a final judgment on the merits. |
| April 30, 2025 — Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals | The court denied the government’s request to stay the injunction. | The district court’s restrictions remained in place at that stage. |
| May 2, 2025 — U.S. Supreme Court | The administration filed an emergency application seeking to stay the injunction. | This was the request described in the headline, made after the two adverse lower-court rulings. |
| June 6, 2025 — U.S. Supreme Court | The Court granted the application and stayed the preliminary injunction pending the Fourth Circuit’s disposition of the appeal and any timely certiorari petition. | The temporary stay changed the injunction’s effect while appellate proceedings continued; it did not decide the case’s ultimate merits. |
| April 10, 2026 — Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc | The court vacated the preliminary injunction and remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings. | The injunction was vacated, but the remand was not a final merits resolution of every question in the litigation. |
The dates and actions are reflected in the Supreme Court docket and the Fourth Circuit’s en banc decision.
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What the Supreme Court did—and did not—decide
On June 6, 2025, the Supreme Court granted the administration’s application to stay the preliminary injunction while the appeal and any timely petition for certiorari proceeded. A stay is an order affecting the operation of another order during litigation; it is not the same as a final ruling that the challenged access was lawful. The Court’s order therefore should not be read as a final answer to the plaintiffs’ claims. The order is available on the Supreme Court docket.
Justice Elena Kagan would have denied the application. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented. Jackson wrote: “Today the Court grants ‘emergency’ relief that allows the Social Security Administration (SSA) to hand DOGE staffers the highly sensitive data of millions of Americans.” That sentence is the dissent’s characterization of the Court’s action, not the majority’s holding. The order and dissent appear in the docket.
What changed in April 2026
On April 10, 2026, the Fourth Circuit sitting en banc vacated the preliminary injunction and remanded the matter to the district court for further proceedings. This later appellate ruling is distinct from the Supreme Court’s June 2025 stay: the stay temporarily suspended the injunction while the appeal continued, whereas the en banc court later vacated the injunction and returned the case to the trial court. The Fourth Circuit’s action does not, by itself, establish the eventual extent of DOGE-affiliated personnel’s access or resolve every issue in the litigation. Read the Fourth Circuit decision.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Is this a new Supreme Court case in 2026?
No. The headline refers to the administration’s May 2, 2025, emergency application concerning SSA records. A separate U.S. DOGE Service petition docketed at the Supreme Court in March 2026 concerns a D.C. Circuit case, not this Social Security records application. The two proceedings should not be conflated. The SSA application and its subsequent orders are documented on the SSA case docket; the separate petition is listed on its own docket.
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