WASHINGTON — The acting head of the Social Security Administration retreated from his threat to shut down the office after a federal judge said an order restricting data access for Elon Musk and his cost-cutting team doesn’t apply to agency employees.
In a letter released Friday, U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander said the order she issued the day before didn’t apply to nearly all of the agency’s employees, only to Musk and and affiliates of his Department of Government Efficiency. “Any suggestion that the order may require the delay or suspension of benefit payments is incorrect,” the judge said.
Hollander’s 14-day temporary restraining order prompted Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek to say Thursday that the judge’s references to “DOGE affiliates” could apply to any agency employee and that he would follow Hollander’s order “exactly and terminate access by all SSA employees to our IT systems.”
Dudek issued a statement Friday acknowledging the judge’s guidance. “Therefore, I am not shutting down the agency. President Trump supports keeping Social Security offices open and getting the right check to the right person.”
In her letter, Hollander said Dudek’s earlier claims about the scope of the court order were “inaccurate.” A DOGE “affiliate” was “a person working on or implementing the DOGE agenda,” she said. “Employees of SSA who are not involved with the DOGE Team or in the work of the DOGE Team are not subject to the order,” she wrote.
In her temporary restraining order, the judge blocked DOGE-affiliated staff from getting agency data that wasn’t anonymized to safeguard Americans’ personal information. DOGE also was ordered to delete or get rid of any data in that category that it already had in its possession. She determined that providing Musk’s team access likely violated laws meant to protect Americans’ privacy and safeguard sensitive information they shared.
DOGE employees could still get access to Social Security Administration records that shielded personal information if they went through the same privacy trainings and background checks as other employees, according to the judge.
If the government had concerns about the scope of the order, the Justice Department should “immediately” contact the judge’s chambers, Hollander said in her letter Friday.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement that Dudek’s initial response to Hollander’s order was “like a child who didn’t get his way.”
“Rather than comply with a lawful court order, he wants to see millions of families, retirees and disabled individuals go hungry, suffer and potentially lose their homes all to curry favor with anti-worker billionaires,” Saunders said. “It’s despicable.”
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