WASHINGTON − The Department of Government Efficiency doesn’t have to turn over records and answer questions about its operations for now, the Supreme Court said on June 6, intervening in a dispute between the Trump administration and a watchdog group over DOGE’s role in slashing federal jobs and remaking the federal government.
In response to an emergency request from the administration, the court’s conservative majority ordered a lower court to narrow the information DOGE needs to disclose.
In a brief, unsigned order, the majority said “separation of powers concerns counsel judicial deference and restraint” when directing the executive branch to hand over internal communications.
The court’s three liberal justices − Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson − disagreed with that decision.
A federal judge had said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is allowed to question the head of DOGE and receive certain documents to help make its case that DOGE must comply with the nation’s premier public disclosure law.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled in March that DOGE appears to have enough independent authority that it should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But he later said additional information is needed to evaluate the administration’s claim that DOGE is merely a presidential advisory body.
Chief Justice John Roberts had previously paused Cooper’s order requiring some transparency to give the justices time to consider the administration’s emergency request that the order be quashed.
The Justice Department argued Cooper’s order “turns FOIA on its head,” effectively requiring disclosure before courts have definitively said DOGE must comply with the act.
That could lead to “opening season for FOIA requests on the President’s advisors,” Solicitor General John Sauer argued in his request.
Elon Musk listens to U.S. President Donald Trump speak in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 11, 2025.
The watchdog group responded that the administration wants the courts to “blindly yield” to its characterization of DOGE. That would give the president free reign to create entities to get around transparency laws, CREW told the Supreme Court.
Elon Musk, who launched DOGE, has complained that people are unfairly blaming DOGE for all problems in the Trump administration.
“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk said in an interview with the Washington Post published May 27. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
Musk previously called DOGE, “the most transparent organization in government ever.”
