Supreme Court Temporarily Shields DOGE From Freedom of Information Requests

The block will remain in effect for the time being, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on May 19, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The Supreme Court on May 23 temporarily blocked lower court orders requiring the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to respond to freedom of information requests in a pending lawsuit.

President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14158 on Jan. 20, implementing DOGE, an advisory body that recommends cost-cutting measures for federal agencies. The executive order directed the entity to “implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

Chief Justice John Roberts issued what’s called an administrative stay that puts lower court orders on hold while the justices consider how to handle the case. Roberts did not provide reasons for his decision.

The orders issued by the federal district court in Washington “are hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court,” Roberts wrote in his new order.

The case is US DOGE Service v. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

In the legal proceeding, CREW argued that it needs to know more about DOGE’s operations because DOGE allegedly wields “unprecedented” authority over the government and is doing so under conditions of “unusual secrecy.”

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court in the case on May 21.

DOGE is an advisory body located in the executive branch—as opposed to an agency—so it “is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA),” Sauer wrote.

The Freedom of Information Act, which took effect in 1966, allows individuals “to obtain access to government information in executive branch agency records,” subject to certain exceptions.

“FOIA applies to records created by federal agencies and does not cover records held by Congress, the courts, or state and local government agencies,” a government website says.

Sauer wrote that despite DOGE’s status as an advisory body, the district court ordered it “to submit to sweeping, intrusive discovery just to determine if USDS is subject to FOIA in the first place.”

Discovery is a process in which parties in a lawsuit obtain evidence from other parties.

Sauer said the district court’s order “turns FOIA on its head, effectively giving [CREW] a win on the merits of its FOIA suit under the guise of figuring out whether FOIA even applies.”

Moreover, he wrote, the court order “clearly violates the separation of powers, subjecting a presidential advisory body to intrusive discovery and threatening the confidentiality and candor of its advice, putatively to address a legal question that never should have necessitated discovery in this case at all.”

Separation of powers is a constitutional doctrine that divides the government into three branches to prevent any single branch from accumulating too much power.

CREW opposed the government’s emergency application to halt the district court order earlier in the day on May 23 and argued that what the Trump administration “is really seeking is not relief from the district court’s narrowly-tailored discovery order, but rather a ruling on the merits of whether the United States DOGE Service, a new component of the Executive Office of the President, is operating as an ‘agency’ subject to the Freedom of Information Act.”

The brief stated that to obtain information about DOGE’s “secretive structure and operations, CREW submitted an expedited FOIA request to DOGE on January 24, 2025,” but DOGE failed to respond in a timely manner.

CREW then sued, arguing that DOGE is wielding “substantial independent authority,” which effectively makes it an “agency” that is subject to FOIA and the Federal Records Act, according to the brief.