A federal appeals court has decided not to remove limits on how much access Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) can have to Social Security systems that hold personal information on millions of Americans.

In a 9-6 vote, all the judges on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals chose to keep the earlier ruling by U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in place while DOGE continues to appeal the decision. The court's ruling was announced on Wednesday. Earlier this month, Judge Hollander issued a temporary court order in a case filed by a group of labour unions and retirees. They claim that DOGE’s recent actions break privacy laws and create serious risks to information security. Judge Hollander ruled that DOGE staff can only access data that has been cleaned of personal details, and even then, only if they complete training and pass background checks. 

She also ordered DOGE and its staff to delete any non-anonymised Social Security data they already have. Additionally, she banned them from making any changes to the Social Security Administration’s computer code. Lawyers for DOGE argued that removing personal details from the data would be too difficult and would interfere with the Trump administration’s efforts to find and stop Social Security fraud. Judge Robert B. King, speaking for the majority, said that DOGE is asking for instant and unlimited access to all Social Security records, including very sensitive personal information of nearly everyone in the country. This includes things like family court and school records, mental health and medical information of people receiving disability benefits, and their bank and income details.

"All this highly sensitive information has long been handed over to SSA by the American people with every reason to believe that the information would be fiercely protected," King wrote. Appellate Judge Julius Richardson, who disagreed with the majority decision, said the case should have been decided by a smaller group of three judges instead of all the active appellate judges. He also pointed out that the plaintiffs haven’t proven that DOGE actually accessed any of their personal information. Instead, they are upset over the idea of possible harm that hasn’t actually happened.