Supreme Court Agrees to Decide Whether DOGE Must Answer Questions in a FOIA Case, and Takes Up the Asylum Material Support Bar

The Supreme Court on October 13 agreed to hear U.S. DOGE Service v. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 25-1103). The case asks whether a judge can order discovery from the White House cost-cutting office in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

CREW sued to get DOGE records, arguing the office acts as a federal agency and so is covered by FOIA. The district court let CREW question DOGE officials and seek documents to establish how the office worked. The administration says DOGE advises the President and is exempt, and that ordering discovery into a presidential advisory body intrudes on the executive branch. It relies on Cheney v. U.S. District Court (2004), in which the justices limited discovery into Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force.

DOGE has formally ended, as covered in our post on GAO’s review of its savings claims. The case still matters for its records, and for whether future White House offices that direct agency work can be shielded from FOIA by being labeled advisory.

Photo: Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Asylum and material support

The court also granted Blanche v. Ozurumba (No. 25-1343). Federal law bars asylum for anyone who gave “material support” to a terrorist organization, a definition broad enough to cover people forced to pay armed groups or who supported groups the US later designated. The case concerns how far the bar reaches and what exceptions apply. The government is asking the court to overturn a ruling favorable to the applicant.

Other orders

The justices also took Berry v. United States, a federal criminal case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a statement on the denial of review in Herrera-Salazar, an immigration case.

Why it matters

The DOGE case reaches the court while dozens of suits over the office’s access to agency data are still pending. A ruling for the administration would make it harder to test, through discovery, whether a White House body is in fact running agency decisions. Arguments are likely early next year, with a decision by the end of June.