Local 2507, Uniformed EMTs, Paramedics & Fire Inspectors v. City of New York
- Analisa Torres
- 1:22-cv-10336
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Local 2507 v. City of New York, Magistrate Judge Gorenstein limited anonymized employee data to lawsuit-related use and found no other restriction justified.
The order affected Local 2507 and the City of New York, as well as the roughly 14,000 FDNY members whose race, gender, and employee identification information appeared in the discovery data.
What happened
Local 2507, Uniformed EMTs, Paramedics & Fire Inspectors v. City of New York concerned whether demographic discovery information could remain marked confidential under a protective order. The information included race, gender, and employee identification numbers for roughly 14,000 FDNY members, but not their names.
The City argued that disclosure would improperly invade employees’ privacy. The court agreed that employees had a privacy interest in their race and sex information, but found that the City had not shown a realistic chance that anyone other than the City could connect the anonymized data to particular employees. The court also found the City’s reliance on New York public-records law and a different case insufficient to justify the restriction.
Magistrate Judge Gorenstein ordered the plaintiffs to use the data only for this lawsuit and not disclose it except as needed to conduct the litigation. He found that the City had not justified any additional restriction.
The detailed version
- Local 2507, Uniformed EMTs, Paramedics & Fire Inspectors v. City of New York · No. 1:22-cv-10336
- Analisa Torres
- May 9, 2023
Background
In Local 2507, Uniformed EMTs, Paramedics & Fire Inspectors v. City of New York, the plaintiffs asked the court to remove the “Confidential” designation from discovery material covered by a protective order. The disputed data contained employees’ race, gender, and employee identification numbers for roughly 14,000 FDNY members. The data did not include employee names.
The City argued that the information was properly designated confidential because disclosure would be an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
Legal standard
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c) permits a protective order for good cause to protect a party or person from harm such as embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden. The party seeking protection must make a particular and specific factual showing that disclosure would cause a clearly defined, specific, and serious injury. General or conclusory statements are not enough.
Court’s analysis
The court noted that the City’s opposition did not discuss the legal standard under Rule 26(c). Instead, the City argued whether the information could be disclosed under New York’s public-records law. The court nevertheless considered whether the City’s arguments supported continued protection under Rule 26(c).
The court accepted that employees had a privacy interest in the identification of their race and sex. But it found that the City had not made the required specific factual showing that there was any realistic chance that anyone other than the City could trace the anonymized information to an individual employee. The court distinguished a ruling by Judge Pitman in No. 18 Civ. 4476 because that case appeared to involve employee names rather than employee identification numbers.
Disposition
The court directed the plaintiffs to use the data only for purposes of the lawsuit and not disclose it to any party except as needed to conduct the litigation. The court concluded that the City had not justified any other restriction.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.