Chief Justice John Roberts has granted the Department of Government Efficiency temporary relief from having to disclose information about its operations to a watchdog group. Roberts’ temporary order Friday will remain in place pending further word from him or the full court.
The federal government argues that DOGE isn’t technically an agency and is therefore exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. From that premise, the government argued that a district court judge in Washington, D.C., had turned FOIA “on its head” by ordering DOGE to “submit to sweeping, intrusive discovery just to determine if USDS [DOGE] is subject to FOIA in the first place.”
A federal appellate panel refused to halt the judge’s discovery order, and the administration appealed to the justices for emergency relief, as it has done in several cases in recent months. The government urged the justices to reject what it called a “fishing expedition” into “sensitive executive-branch functions.”
The watchdog group that brought the lawsuit, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, opposed DOGE’s urgent bid. CREW said the government was trying to prematurely get the justices to decide that DOGE isn’t an agency subject to FOIA, arguing that what’s at issue here is the “far narrower antecedent question: whether the court of appeals clearly and indisputably erred in refusing to disturb a district court order allowing limited discovery to ascertain DOGE’s agency status.” It said the government “has raised a fact-intensive legal issue supported by unreliable evidence, did so in a manner it was explicitly told would lead to discovery, and now needs to respond.”
This litigation is separate from the urgent Supreme Court appeal over DOGE’s access to sensitive Social Security data.
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