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Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown joined a coalition of 21 states supporting a lawsuit that aims to stop the current wave of layoffs at the Social Security Administration.
Those layoffs were set off by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, a commission President Donald Trump’s administration has tasked with slashing federal spending.
The group of attorneys general filed an amicus brief at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Wednesday, calling for a preliminary injunction to stop job cuts. In a statement, Brown said DOGE’s “reckless and dishonest actions” have caused delays in issuing social security payments to 1.2 million Marylanders, including 375,000 older adults.
“Our elderly neighbors, who rely on these benefits for basic necessities, should not have to endure longer wait times, closed offices and crashed websites because of the Trump Administration’s chaotic dismantling of these essential public services,” Brown said. “We’re taking action to ensure benefits continue uninterrupted.”
The American Association of People with Disabilities and other disability advocates filed a federal lawsuit in early April, claiming recent changes made at the SSA by Musk and his DOGE team have made it more difficult for people with disabilities and older adults to access their benefits.
Those changes include mass staff reductions and eliminating offices within the agency. The lawsuit is asking the court to stop the “dismantling” of the agency’s infrastructure and the termination of 7,000 employees in order to “ensure fairness, accessibility, and timely delivery of benefits.”
“Americans with disabilities deserve a functioning Social Security system, not arbitrary shutdowns and inaccessible service,” AAPD President and CEO Maria Town said in a statement. “We filed this lawsuit because disabled Americans are already suffering — and without urgent court intervention, the harm will only grow.”
Since the Trump administration has come into power, DOGE has been working to trim the federal workforce, laying off tens of thousands of federal workers across multiple agencies to cut spending. In February, The Associated Press reported that SSA planned to lay off at least 7,000 people from its workforce of 60,000 employees with a possible reduction as high as 50%.
Advocates argue that layoffs will reduce the agency’s ability to serve its over 72 million recipients in a timely manner. Former SSA commissioner Martin O’Malley told CNN that the loss of experienced works to manage its computer systems could lead to technical outages that could delay the release of benefit payments.
Despite DOGE’s work, President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he will not go after social security payments, with the White House releasing a memo claiming the agency made $72 billion in improper payments between 2015 and 2022.
However, Brown has sued the Trump administration, Musk and DOGE multiple times since February over its federal job cuts and removal of grant funding for the National Institutes of Health, claiming its actions are illegal.
“This administration’s misleading effort to shrink the federal workforce and further disrupt services will likewise hurt all of us,” Brown said.
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