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Bal v. U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury, No. 21-4702, 2024 WL 5056346 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 9, 2024) (Wang, Mag. J.)

Date

Bal v. U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury, No. 21-4702, 2024 WL 5056346 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 9, 2024) (Wang, Mag. J.)

Re: Request for records concerning blocking of plaintiff’s payment by PayPal

Disposition:  Granting defendant’s motion for summary judgment; denying plaintiff’s cross-motion for summary judgment

  • Litigation Considerations, Evidentiary Showing, Adequacy of Search:  The court relates that “[defendant] produced a single, 3-page document in response to Plaintiff’s FOIA request on November 5, 2021.”  “As described in the Vaughn index, the document produced was a blocking report submitted by PayPal to OFAC dated August 24, 2018, identifying the blocked transaction from Plaintiff.”  “This is sufficient to show that Defendants undertook an adequate search for documents responsive to Plaintiff’s request, and Plaintiff does not dispute the diligence of Defendants’ search.”
     
  • Exemption 4: The court finds that “Defendant has identified the information redacted under Exemption 4 as specific details regarding the filer of the blocking report, transaction ID information, the funding source for the transaction, and the words associated with the transaction that caused it to be flagged by PayPal.”  “PayPal and [defendant] keep this information confidential in order to prevent others from future sanctions evasion.”  “Accordingly, the three-part test for Exemption 4 is satisfied.”
     
  • Exemption 6: The court relates that “[t]he only information purported to be redacted is personally identifiable information (“PII”) of PayPal's employee(s) who were involved in submitting the blocking report, including names and a telephone number.”  The court finds that “[s]uch information is regularly kept confidential, and disclosing these employees’ PII could expose them to unnecessary harassment and/or harm.”  “This is precisely the type of information that falls within the ambit of Exemption 6 under the first prong of the inquiry.”  “Second, there is no relevant public interest that outweighs the privacy interest at stake.”  “Plaintiff has failed to demonstrate or argue at all how the PII of PayPal’s employee(s) will contribute to the public understanding of the operations or activities of the government.”  “This information explicitly pertains to private employees.”  “Identification of the PayPal employee(s) who submitted the blocking report to [defendant] in the first place would serve no purpose in adjudicating this FOIA claim and would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, and potentially subject the PayPal employee(s) to unnecessary litigation.” “Further, by failing to contest that the redacted information contains personnel and/or medical files, Plaintiff has ‘waived any argument with respect to whether these records are of the type that are subject to Exemption 6.’”
     
  • Litigation Considerations, Vaughn Index/Declaration:  In response to plaintiff’s general objections, the court finds that “Plaintiff has provided no evidence to suggest that Defendants’ redactions were improper or made with bad faith sufficient to ‘impugn the agency’s affidavits or otherwise warrant denial of summary judgment.’”
Court Decision Topic(s)
District Court opinions
Exemption 4
Exemption 6
Litigation Considerations, Adequacy of Search
Litigation Considerations, Vaughn Index/Declarations
Updated January 23, 2025