The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a dispute over how much information the U.S. DOGE Service (USDS) must provide during litigation over whether it falls under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The case concerns a discovery order seeking information about the service’s role in efforts to reduce the size of the federal government.
A federal district court previously found that USDS was likely subject to FOIA and ordered it to begin processing a government watchdog group’s request for records.
The Trump administration maintains that USDS was not a federal agency subject to FOIA because it only advised and assisted the president and exercised no substantial independent authority. USDS administrator Amy Gleason has argued that the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) teams responsible for cost cutting and reducing the size of the federal government were not under USDS’s direct control. Instead, she says, the agencies involved managed the teams.
The dispute is now before the Supreme Court as U.S. Doge Service v. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which the justices agreed to hear on Oct. 13. The case arises from a FOIA request filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) in January of 2025 that sought communications between the USDS administrator and the USDS personnel. CREW is a non-partisan, nonprofit government watchdog. The request also sought financial disclosures submitted by USDS staff. The federal government has refused to process the request for USDS documents.
Congress amended the FOIA in 1974 to specify that it applies to the Executive Office of the President. However, Congress indicated that the revised statute would not apply to the president’s immediate personal staff or units in the executive office whose sole function is to advise and assist the president.
How We Got Here: Watchdog Seeks Information on DOGE Decisions
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January 2025 that established DOGE to advance a government-efficiency agenda. The order renamed the existing United States Digital Service as the United States DOGE Service and established it within the Executive Office of the President. It also created a temporary organization within USDS with a termination date of July 4, 2026. Elon Musk led the DOGE initiative, although the White House formally identified Amy Gleason as acting USDS administrator. Under Musk's leadership, DOGE pursued sweeping cuts to federal staffing and government contracts.
CREW submitted its initial FOIA requests to the USDS and the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) the same month Trump signed the EO. It sought information from USDS that included organizational charts and financial disclosures. The federal government agreed to process the OMB requests but not those seeking information from the USDS, claiming the USDS was not subject to FOIA.
CREW followed up with a lawsuit seeking a declaration that USDS was subject to FOIA and an order requiring the government to process its request. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered USDS to begin expedited processing, finding that CREW was likely to succeed in demonstrating that the service exercised substantial independent authority that made it subject to FOIA. The court later authorized limited discovery into USDS’s structure and authority. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied the government’s petition to block that discovery order. The Department of Justice then asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
Second Time Court Will Address Issue
The government sought a stay from the Supreme Court, which also treated the application as a petition for certiorari. On June 6, 2025, the Supreme Court granted review, vacated the appeals court’s order, and sent the case back to that court to take appropriate action to narrow discovery.
The order, supported by the court’s six conservative justices, said requests seeking the content of USDS recommendations within the executive branch and whether those recommendations were followed were too broad. It also said separation of powers concerns called for judicial restraint when ordering discovery into internal executive branch communications. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson objected to the order.
On remand in the appeals court, CREW withdrew its discovery requests concerning recommendations by the Trump administration and USDS staff. Its remaining requests sought information about USDS’s structure, directives to cancel contracts and fire workers, and any exercise of substantial independent authority. The appeals court narrowed the discovery order to exclude the withdrawn requests but otherwise declined to block it. However, the Department of Justice again appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the lower courts should reassess all FOIA-related discovery in the case, not just discovery related to USDS recommendations.
Questions About DOGE May Never be Answered
Unless other federal courts have issued conflicting decisions, the Supreme Court usually limits the cases it selects to those at least some justices believe have been wrongly decided. Since the high court has already restricted discovery into USDS’s activities, its decision to revisit the dispute suggests that a majority may favor further limits on the information CREW can obtain. If so, CREW may struggle to show that USDS exercised substantial independent authority and therefore must comply with FOIA.
If the USDS is not subject to FOIA, the American public may not fully know the reasoning DOGE teams used to recommend firing thousands of federal employees or canceling billions of dollars in contracts.
