Acting Social Security Chief Confirms He Won’t Shut Down Agency After DOGE Court Order

Acting Commissioner Lee Dudek released a statement after suggesting he may have to close down the agency after a judge ruled against DOGE this week.

A woman stands outside a Social Security Administration building in Burbank, Calif., on Nov. 5, 2020. Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images

The acting Social Security Administration (SSA) head called off shutting down the agency after he previously said he would do so in the aftermath of a temporary court order that blocked Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) officials from accessing data.

In a statement on March 21, acting Commissioner Lee Dudek said that he is “not shutting down the agency” and that President Donald Trump “supports keeping Social Security offices open and getting the right check to the right person at the right time.” Employees at the agency will continue their work under the judge’s order, he stated.

The judge had given the agency “clarifying guidance” about the temporary order related to DOGE workers at the agency, according to his statement.

On March 20, U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander barred DOGE from accessing Social Security systems that contain personally identifiable information and accused the agency of looking for fraudulent activity that may not exist.

In the aftermath of the order, Dudek told several media outlets that he may be forced to shut down the SSA.

“My anti-fraud team would be DOGE affiliates. My IT staff would be DOGE affiliates,” he told Bloomberg News last week. “As it stands, I will follow it exactly and terminate access by all SSA employees to our IT systems.”

“Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency.”

Separately, Dudek told The Washington Post in an exclusive interview that “everything in the agency” involves personally identifiable information and that “unless I get clarification, I’ll just start to shut it down. I don’t have much of a choice here.”

His comments prompted a letter from Hollander to counsel of the SSA and the plaintiffs involved in the case. She wrote that she was aware of media reports that contained Dudek’s statements about potentially closing down the SSA in the wake of her order.

“Employees of SSA who are not involved with the DOGE Team or in the work of the DOGE Team are not subject to the Order,” Hollander wrote on March 21 in a letter to attorneys involved in the case. “Moreover, any suggestion that the Order may require the delay or suspension of benefit payments is incorrect.”

Hollander stated that her order “applies only to SSA employees working on the DOGE agenda” and doesn’t have any impact on SSA operations.

“In fact, if others at SSA are involved with DOGE, as Mr. Dudek seems to claim,” she said, “then I was misled by counsel for the government.”

Her ruling on March 20 was in response to a complaint filed by a union and other plaintiffs in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, who had argued that DOGE’s activity is a power grab and executive overreach.

They wrote that DOGE’s activity in the agency responsible for sending out Social Security and Social Security Disability Insurance payments every month to millions of people could potentially expose the personal data of millions of Americans.

Lawyers for the Trump administration argued that the unions and other groups who filed the complaint lacked the standing to do so and were unable to provide evidence that they could face imminent harm if DOGE continues to access the agency’s data.

Established by Trump based on an existing agency soon after he took office, DOGE—led by tech billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk—was set up to root out fraud, abuse, and waste inside the federal government. However, DOGE has faced a number of lawsuits in recent weeks, although judges have not always agreed with the plaintiffs challenging the agency.