How the Social Security Administration is dodging a federal court order
The Trump administration has installed a DOGE operative as the new Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Social Security Administration (SSA) in an apparent effort to evade a federal court order blocking DOGE affiliates from accessing databases containing the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.
Popular Information obtained an internal memorandum from Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek announcing Scott Coulter, a DOGE operative previously assigned to NASA and the SSA, as the SSA's new CIO.
The move, which was not announced publicly, seems related to a federal lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions — including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO, and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — on February 21. The lawsuit alleged that DOGE officials were accessing "personal, confidential, private, and sensitive data from the Social Security Administration" in violation of federal law, including the Privacy Act. The labor unions sued the SSA, Dudek, and then-CIO Michael Russo to stop the disclosure of the data to DOGE.
On March 21, the federal judge overseeing the AFSCME case, Ellen Lipton Hollander, granted the plaintiffs a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) which prohibited SSA, Dudek, and Russo from "granting access to any SSA system of record containing personally identifiable information" to DOGE or any "members of the DOGE team established at the SSA." The order defined the DOGE team at SSA as "any person assigned to SSA to fulfill the DOGE agenda."
In response, Dudek flipped out. In interviews with Bloomberg News and the New York Times, he claimed that everyone in the SSA's IT department was there to "fulfill the DOGE agenda" and that complying with the order would require him to shut down the agency. "Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency," Dudek said.
Dudek's comments prompted Judge Hollander to issue two unusual letters, noting that Dudek's claims about the scope of the order were " inaccurate." Specifically, Judge Hollander said that the TRO applies " only to SSA employees working on the DOGE agenda" and "has no bearing on ordinary operations at SSA."
Facing a barrage of criticism, Dudek backed down. "I am not shutting down the agency," Dudek said in a statement. "President Trump supports keeping Social Security offices open and getting the right check to the right person at the right time. SSA employees and their work will continue under the TRO."
As required by the TRO, the SSA submitted a status report on Monday, certifying that "SSA has taken all necessary steps to implement the Court’s Order" and "revoked all SSA DOGE Team members’ access to SSA systems of records." The status report did note that "SSA may continue work on" projects that "SSA DOGE Team members previously led or worked on" but "without the SSA DOGE Team members’ involvement." The status report also added the caveat that "Acting Commissioner, [then-CIO Michael] Russo, and other SSA employees may continue to access SSA records for other official SSA duties."
The next day, the agency replaced Russo with Coulter, who was previously a member of the SSA DOGE Team. It is unlikely that the timing was accidental. By naming Coulter SSA's CIO, the administration appears to be attempting to transform Coulter from a member of the DOGE Team to a regular SSA employee.
What does this mean? Despite the court order, someone who, until Tuesday, was identified as a member of the DOGE Team can continue to access sensitive personal information at SSA. And Coulter can use that sensitive information to continue the same projects that were previously led by DOGE. Those projects may even be done by the same people, who presumably could be hired onto SSA's staff by the agency's new CIO. |
