Some excerpts from the 88 pages of opinions in AFSCME v. Social Security Admin., decided today by the Fourth Circuit en banc, in an opinion by Judge Toby Heytens:
Three organizations sued to stop the Social Security Administration from giving U.S. DOGE Service personnel access to sensitive personal information about millions of Americans. The district court granted a preliminary injunction, which the Supreme Court stayed pending this appeal and any further Supreme Court review. We now vacate the current preliminary injunction and return the case to the district court for further proceedings….
On January 20, 2025, the President signed an executive order creating the U.S. DOGE Service and charging it with making government technology more efficient. DOGE personnel quickly made their way to the Social Security Administration and sought "unprecedented" access to agency systems, including non-anonymized personally identifiable information. A standoff ensued, and career officials resigned. A new acting administrator was installed and granted DOGE the sweeping access it sought.
Three organizations representing a combined seven million Americans sued to prevent DOGE from accessing their members' personally identifiable information. When the case was filed and in the original preliminary injunction proceedings, plaintiffs' theory of the case was not that DOGE had misused the information or disclosed it (accidentally or otherwise) to malicious actors. Instead, plaintiffs argued that handing over non-anonymized and highly sensitive information to DOGE was itself unlawful.
After hours of hearings and hundreds of pages of analysis, the district court issued the preliminary injunction we review here. The Supreme Court stayed that preliminary injunction and directed that the stay would remain in effect until the completion of all appellate review—including by the Supreme Court—of the district court's order. We have jurisdiction to review the district court's order ….
The court concluded that the plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged injury, for purposes of standing:
