This is another win in court for the Trump administration (and DOGE) and another loss for unions.
A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday rejected a bid by a group of unions to block the Trump administration government downsizing team known as the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing sensitive data on Americans.
The Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision, opens new tab said the unions were unlikely to prevail on claims that DOGE would violate federal privacy laws by accessing data at the U.S. Department of Education, Treasury Department, and Office of Personnel Management...
The agencies involved in the case and the unions that sued, which include the American Federation of Teachers and the National Federation of Federal Employees, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
These government unions are just Democratic Party fundraisers. The lawsuits they filed were PR stunts aimed at making attempts by DOGE to find out where all the money was going into a controversy Democrats could benefit from. There are thousands of government employees who already have access to this data. Adding a few more was never a threat to public privacy. Nevertheless, unions were quickly able to find a federal judge willing to back them up with a TRO.
In February, two labor unions and a grassroots advocacy group, the Alliance for Retired Americans, went to federal court in Baltimore, Md., to challenge SSA’s decision to provide DOGE with access to its records. They contended that SSA had “abandoned its commitment to maintaining the privacy of personal data” for millions of Americans.
In March, [U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton] Hollander temporarily barred SSA from giving DOGE team members access to SSA records, and in April extended that prohibition while litigation continued in the lower courts.
By a vote of 9-6, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit turned down the government’s request to put Hollander’s order on hold. That prompted the government to come to the Supreme Court on Friday afternoon, asking the justices to intervene.
The Supreme Court felt differently, at least the majority did.
In an unsigned order, the court, acting at the request of the Trump administration, temporarily overturned actions by two lower courts that had limited the DOGE team's access to sensitive private information at the Social Security Administration. The high court sent the case back to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., to rule on the merits.
The vote was 6 to 3, with the conservative super majority ruling in favor of the DOGE team. The court's three liberals said they would have ruled the other way, temporarily barring the DOGE team's access to Social Security records while the case proceeds through the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
As mentioned above, neither unions has put out a press release yet responding to the decision. Presumably they have some highly paid staff working on coming up with a response for why this attack on the Trump administration failed. Meanwhile, the AFT and Randi Weingarten are too busy sending out press releases about Trump's federalizing of DC police. They just moved on to the next attack.
Trump's move to federalize the @DCPoliceDept & deploy the National Guard, with total violent crime at a 30-year low, is a gross overreach, disconnected from actual conditions on the ground. Read more in my statement here. https://t.co/MZTgyEnvAY
— Randi Weingarten 🇺🇸❌👑💪🏿👩🎓🟣🇺🇦 (@rweingarten) August 11, 2025
What does this have to do with a teacher's union? Nothing, until you realize these unions are just highly funded outside groups working for Democrats' benefit. Then it all makes perfect sense. They don't need a reason to attack President Trump, because that's mostly what they exist to do, i.e. attack Republicans and support Democrats.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member