Alhalemi v. City University of New York
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:24-cv-06975
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Alhalemi v. City University of New York, Judge Tarnofsky denied the defendant’s motion to pause discovery while its dismissal motion was pending.
The ruling directly affected Bashir Alhalemi and City University of New York: the defendant’s request to pause discovery was denied.
What happened
In Alhalemi v. City University of New York, the defendant asked the court to pause discovery until the court decided its motion to dismiss the amended complaint. The parties had not yet exchanged discovery requests. The plaintiff said the expected discovery would be targeted and concern the platform’s accessibility and the school’s knowledge of its limitations.
The court considered the expected scope and burden of discovery, the strength of the dismissal motion, and possible prejudice from a pause. It found that the dismissal motion raised substantial arguments supported by case law and therefore favored a stay. But because the defendant had not shown that discovery would be broad, the court found that the defendant had not shown the required good cause.
Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky denied the defendant’s motion to stay discovery and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate the motion from the docket.
The detailed version
- Alhalemi v. City University of New York · No. 1:24-cv-06975
- Lorna Schofield
- Aug. 4, 2025
Background
The defendant moved to stay, or pause, discovery while its motion to dismiss the amended complaint was pending. The court considered the amended complaint, the parties’ briefs concerning both motions, and the plaintiff’s responses.
Legal standard
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c) allows a court to stay discovery for “good cause shown.” In deciding whether to stay discovery while a motion to dismiss is pending, courts consider the breadth of the requested discovery, the burden of responding, the strength of the motion to dismiss, and the prejudice to the party opposing the stay.
Analysis
The court noted that the parties had not yet exchanged discovery requests, so the breadth of discovery was unclear. The plaintiff proposed targeted discovery concerning the accessibility of the platform and the school’s knowledge of the platform’s limitations. The court found that this anticipated limited scope counseled against a stay.
The court found that the strength of the motion to dismiss counseled in favor of a stay. It stated that the motion was not unfounded in law and that the defendant’s memorandum presented substantial arguments for dismissing several, if not all, of the amended complaint’s claims. Those arguments were supported by case law from courts in the same federal circuit. The court expressly stated that this observation did not predict the motion’s outcome.
The court also considered the plaintiff’s argument that a stay would cause prejudice because the requested discovery was relevant to the claims. It explained that relevance alone could not be enough to prevent a stay, because otherwise discovery could never be stayed. Even so, the defendant had not shown that discovery would be broad and therefore had not met its burden of showing good cause.
Disposition
The court denied the defendant’s motion to stay discovery. The Clerk of Court was requested to terminate ECF 50.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.