Fourth Circuit En Banc Vacates the SSA-DOGE Injunction on Irreparable Harm Alone, Leaving the Privacy Act Merits Unreviewed (AFSCME v. SSA)

The Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc, decided AFSCME v. SSA and wrote: “We now vacate the current preliminary injunction”. The ground was irreparable harm only. The court held the plaintiffs had not shown it on the record before the district court and vacated “without addressing whether plaintiffs satisfy the remaining three Winter factors”, which include likelihood of success on the merits.

What was vacated. Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander’s Maryland preliminary injunction had found the plaintiffs likely to succeed on the claim that SSA’s grant of access to its DOGE team was arbitrary and capricious and “in violation of the Privacy Act and the APA”. The Supreme Court had already stayed that injunction, writing that “SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records in question”.

What the ruling does not do. It does not hold that SSA complied with the Privacy Act. No appellate court reached that question. The district court’s likely-violation finding no longer has any operative effect, but it was never reversed on the merits. The en banc court also disavowed the panel’s multiplicative probability test from the companion Treasury, Education and OPM case: “All statements to the contrary in AFT are abrogated”.

Ledger classification. FOUND at the district court (preliminary). STAYED by the Supreme Court. VACATED by the en banc court on a non-merits ground. The case went back to Maryland, where the government’s own corrections to the record became the basis for discovery; see 2026-06-26–hollander-holds-ssa-admissions-show-tro-noncompliance-questions-orders-discovery.