Trump Admin Asks Supreme Court to Halt DOGE Discovery

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that the Department of Government Efficiency serves as an advisory body in the executive branch and isn’t an agency.

Elon Musk (L) speaks as President Donald Trump looks on in the Oval Office of the White House on Feb. 11, 2025. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

The Trump administration on May 21 submitted a petition to the Supreme Court to block discovery in a lawsuit that seeks access to information about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The emergency application asks the high court to lift a lower court order that allowed limited discovery into whether DOGE can be considered a government agency in a lawsuit filed earlier this year by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington against the administration and DOGE.

Arguing on behalf of the government, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that DOGE serves as an advisory body in the executive branch and isn’t an agency, meaning that it should be rendered exempt from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. A FOIA lawsuit is a legal action filed in a federal court that seeks to find information that the petitioner believes is being improperly withheld from the public.

Sauer contended that the lower court ordered DOGE “to submit to sweeping, intrusive discovery just to determine if USDS is subject to FOIA in the first place,” which he argued would turn “FOIA on its head, effectively giving respondent a win on the merits of its FOIA suit under the guise of figuring out whether FOIA even applies.” USDS refers to the U.S. Digital Service, which was created in 2014 and later renamed as DOGE by President Donald Trump.

“And that 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,” the court filing reads.

Sauer said that “nullifying FOIA’s solicitude for presidential advisors and ordering roving discovery into their recommendations and advice represents an untenable affront to the separation of powers.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a decision earlier in May to allow limited discovery in the DOGE lawsuit after a federal judge in March ruled that DOGE likely is covered under FOIA and ordered it to provide some documents to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit.

Established by Trump in January, DOGE’s mandate is to find fraud, waste, and abuse within the federal government. So far, the task force has stated via its website that more than $170 billion has been saved through the cancellation of government contracts, termination of federal grants, and ending of leases.

Presidential adviser Elon Musk, who oversees DOGE alongside its official head, Amy Gleason, said in April in a Tesla investor call that he will be taking a step back from government work to focus more attention on the companies that he runs, starting in May.

On May 20, Musk said at an event in Qatar that for DOGE to make more cuts to federal spending, Congress and various federal agencies need to act on its recommendations.

He is a special government employee, which means that he is exempt from certain requirements on what he is required to disclose. It also means that he can only serve 130 days in a year, meaning that he has to leave the government role by the end of May.

The May 21 request is one of at least a dozen emergency requests the Trump administration has submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court since January.