By The Epoch Times | Created at 2025-04-03 10:42:41 | Updated at 2025-04-04 05:50:17
19 hours ago
The lawsuit claims the recent mass layoffs will harm Americans with disabilities who depend on Social Security benefits.
Disability rights groups filed a lawsuit on April 2 against the Social Security Administration (SSA), the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and Elon Musk, alleging that recent mass layoffs and the elimination of critical offices within the SSA are unconstitutional and harm Americans with disabilities.
In late February, the SSA announced plans to lay off 7,000 workers, or around 12 percent of the agency’s 57,000-person workforce—2,477 of whom accepted the Trump administration’s voluntary separation payment offer.
Plaintiffs said they expect the remaining over 4,000 positions to be cut in line with the reduction in force efforts. The SSA was required to submit a reduction-in-force plan to the Office of Personnel Management by March 13, 2025; however, the document has not been made public, according to the lawsuit.
In February, the SSA also shut down what it said was its “wasteful” Office of Transformation (OT) as well as the Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity (OCREO), which it described as a “duplicative” office.
The SSA sends checks to 73 million retired and disabled Americans each month.
Five groups—the American Association of People with Disabilities, the National Federation of the Blind, Deaf Equality, the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare—and seven social security beneficiaries filed the lawsuit against the SSA and DOGE.
Related Stories
The SSA and its acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, along with DOGE and its Acting Administrator Amy Gleason, and the president’s adviser Elon Musk are listed as defendants.
According to the lawsuit, plaintiffs are individuals with disabilities who depend on Social Security benefits to meet their “most basic and essential needs.”
“They bring this action to challenge the reckless and devastating actions of the defendants, which have severely undermined the agency’s public-facing services, causing significant and irreparable harm to the very individuals the Social Security Administration (‘SSA’) is obligated to serve,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that actions taken by the defendants are an “unprecedented and unconstitutional assault on Social Security benefits, concealed beneath the hollow pretense of bureaucratic ’reform.'”
“In just nine weeks, the new administration has upended the agency with sweeping and destabilizing policy changes—shifting critical agency functions onto overburdened local offices, slashing telephone-based services, and debilitating the agency’s ability to meet beneficiaries’ needs,” the lawsuit states.
“The result is a systematic dismantling of SSA’s core functions, leaving millions of beneficiaries without the essential benefits they are legally entitled to. The defendants have abandoned their duty, placing ideology over obligation and governance over the governed.”
The staff cuts by the SSA also unlawfully harm Americans with disabilities and older adults who rely on Social Security services and violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights to petition the government and to due process, the lawsuit states.
Plaintiffs further accuse the defendants of violating a federal law barring agency actions that are “arbitrary and capricious,” and a different law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities.
The groups are seeking emergency, declaratory, and injunctive relief against the alleged “dismantling” of the SSA.
The Epoch Times has contacted the White House and the SSA for comment.
Last week, Elon Musk, during an interview with Fox News chief political correspondent Bret Baier, addressed concerns about DOGE’s work, saying that plans for the SSA are going to help people access their benefits.
“Legitimate people, as a result of the work of DOGE, will receive more Social Security, not less. I want to emphasize that. As a result of the work of DOGE, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive more money, not less money,” he said.
“I want to emphasize that point and let the record show that I said this and it'll be proven out to be true. Let’s check back on this in the future. So the changes that we’re doing here will ensure the solvency of the American government, of the United States of America. This is what we’re trying to do, is ensure that people do receive their benefits in the future. And you can only receive your benefits if the country is operating in a healthy and competent way.”
Maria Town, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities, said in an April 2 statement on the lawsuit, “Americans with disabilities deserve a functioning Social Security system, not arbitrary shutdowns and inaccessible service. We filed this lawsuit because disabled Americans are already suffering—and without urgent court intervention, the harm will only grow.”
According to Town, approximately 30,000 disabled people died in 2023 while waiting for their SSDI application to be approved.
“Making SSA harder to access is not only denying disabled Americans their right to access that protection, it is theft,” Town said.
Musk had told Baier that DOGE was making efforts to update the aged government computing systems that process America’s social security claims.
“When I say that our job is tech support, I really mean it. We have to fix the computers. If the computers can’t stay online, people won’t receive their Social Security. So what we have here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are preventing people from receiving their benefits ... And we’re fixing it,” he said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
