Overview

• The 6-3 ruling lifts a lower court injunction and allows the Department of Government Efficiency to obtain non-anonymized records from the Social Security Administration.
• Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented, citing potential violations of the Privacy Act and exposure of medical, financial and identifying information.
• White House spokesperson Elizabeth Huston and SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano praised the decision as a step toward cutting waste, fraud and abuse and modernizing data systems.
• A coalition of advocacy groups including AFSCME and the American Federation of Teachers vowed to pursue further legal challenges to safeguard Americans’ personal data.
• Bloomberg Opinion columnist Noah Feldman likened the decision to Chinese surveillance models, warning it advances an all-seeing government architecture.