The Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to decide whether the Trump administration can keep the records of the U.S. DOGE Service out of public hands, taking up the government's appeal in the Freedom of Information Act fight brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW. The case, U.S. DOGE Service v. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, will be argued later this term, with a ruling expected by the end of June.
CREW filed its FOIA requests in January 2025, asking for the DOGE Service's organizational charts, financial disclosures and records of its operations. The Office of Management and Budget agreed to process a separate request, but the DOGE Service refused, arguing that it is not an agency covered by FOIA at all: it sits inside the Executive Office of the President and exists to advise him, a category the courts have long treated as outside the disclosure law. CREW answers that the test is what DOGE actually did — directing mass firings, terminating contracts and reshaping federal agencies — not where it appears on an organizational chart.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper sided with CREW in April 2025, finding that DOGE likely is an agency covered by FOIA. He ordered disclosures and ruled that CREW could question DOGE official Amy Gleason at a deposition. The Supreme Court has stepped in once already: on an emergency basis in June 2025, it ordered the D.C. Circuit to narrow the judge's directives. CREW dropped some of its requests, but this July the appeals court refused to halt the remaining disclosure order, and the administration went back to the justices.
"We will continue to pursue transparency for the American people, who deserve to know the details of the Trump administration's efforts to unilaterally remake the federal government." — Nikhel Sus, CREW's chief counsel
The ruling will reach well past one lawsuit. President Trump created DOGE by executive order on his first day back in office, with an 18-month agenda to cut the size of government; Elon Musk led it in its opening months, and DOGE announced on July 4, 2025, that its formal mission had ended, claiming tens of billions of dollars in savings. If the Court holds that DOGE was a FOIA agency, its records open to any requester who asks. If it holds the other way, it confirms that a president can house an advisory operation inside his own office, beyond the disclosure law's reach. The answer comes by the end of June.
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