Dem
52
Ties
3
GOP
45
This one's been on the backburner for a week or so, but it's time to finally address it.
The Social Security Administration houses Americans' most private information, including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, employment earnings, marital status, bank information, places of residence, medical records and more. For this reason, it is walled off from the rest of the federal government and is closely guarded against unauthorized access. Or, at least, it was. In 1974, Congress enacted the Privacy Act to protect this sensitive information from disclosure unless certain criteria are met. The Administrative Procedures Act (APA) also adds an additional layer of protection by requiring adherence to strict procedures before any data is shared outside the agency.
Readers may recall that in June 2025, the Supreme Court, in a ruling on its infamous shadow docket, cavalierly granted access to some of Elon Musk's DOGE bros, who then promptly uploaded some of the data to an insecure cloud server.
Did SCOTUS learn anything from that debacle? Oh dear reader, much like the mythical gods on Mt. Olympus, we mere mortals are just pawns for their amusement, when they bother to consider us at all. And so it is that the right-wing majority on the Court has granted yet another agency unfettered access to all of our private information without having to comply with something as trifling as federal law.
Once again using the magic phrase "voter fraud," the Trump administration has taken giant steps toward creating a national database comprising every American citizen. You have to hand it to the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025—they know how the federal government works and what systems can be leveraged for their ultimate goal of a surveillance state.
In this case, the Department of Homeland Security has a database called SAVE—Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements. This database was created for a very limited purpose: to, as the title suggests, verify a non-citizen's entitlement to benefits or employment. But Donald Trump (or, more likely, Stephen Miller) wants to expand that database and incorporate U.S. citizen SSA data into it. Not only that, the plan is for states to be able to access that information, ostensibly to check their voter lists against it to see if any non-citizens are registered to vote. What could possibly go wrong?
Various groups sued, arguing that these actions are a violation of the Privacy Act and other laws since DHS has not met any of the criteria for accessing this information. And verifying voter status can be accomplished much more accurately at the state level. As has been widely reported, an expanded SAVE database used for this purpose will be riddled with errors. That is because the SSA often won't have the most up-to-date and accurate voter eligibility information, such as name changes, that states have.
A lower court had barred the administration from using SSA information this way, ruling that it violated the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the APA. This ruling was upheld on appeal. But, once again on the shadow docket, SCOTUS has opened up Americans' private information for Trump and his cronies to rummage around in for no legitimate purpose. For now, it's only temporary, until the litigation has been fully resolved. And it won't be operational for the midterm elections because of a 90-day rule that prohibits wide-scale removal of voters from the rolls within 90 days of an election. Associate Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented from the ruling.
Former SSA officials, who resigned last year after unsuccessfully trying to protect Americans' data from the DOGE bros, have been sounding the alarm about the consequences of these data breaches. Once rung, that bell cannot be unrung. Nancy Altman of Social Security Works, a Social Security advocacy group, warned, "If there is an evil intent to punish perceived enemies, someone could erase your earnings record, making it impossible to collect the Social Security and Medicare benefits you have earned."
To the extent there is a silver lining here, the Court majority based its decision on a novel interpretation of a section of the federal immigration law of 1996. In her dissent, Jackson pointed out that the courts require a clear statement from Congress before one law can take precedence over other federal laws that, for instance, restrict the disclosure of citizenship information. That "clear statement" is not present in the immigration law that the majority claims overrides the Privacy Act and other federal laws protecting SSA data. That means that Congress can fix this and make it absolutely clear that DHS does not have the regulatory authority to expand SAVE in this way. Just add it to the ever-growing list of necessary governmental reforms post-Trump. (L)