Airbnb Files A Motion With The NY Supreme Court To Block Attorney General’s Subpoena

Airbnb’s fight with local regulators in New York continues to heat up, as it was put under pressure to provide a large amount of user data to the Attorney General’s office there. Today, the company fought back against those demands by filing a motion which it hopes will block that request.

Earlier this week, Airbnb was subpoenaed by the New York Attorney General’s office, which sought data on more than 15,000 local hosts in the community. At the time, Airbnb said that it would continue conversations with the Attorney General to see if the two sides could reach a compromise in the situation.

For Airbnb, that meant working with the local government to weed out bad actors and illegal hotels without compromising the user data of thousands of its users. In a blog post last week, Airbnb committed to helping collect occupancy tax from hosts and also to provide a helpline to weed out nuisances throughout the city.

It looks like the compromise isn’t going to happen, as today Airbnb announced that it filed a motion with the New York Supreme Court in an effort to block the Attorney General’s request. In a blog post, Airbnb said it believed the subpoena was “unreasonably broad” and that it would fight against the request. Public policy head David Hantman wrote:

“the subpoena issued by the Attorney General last Friday goes well beyond bad actors and demands information about thousands of regular Airbnb hosts in New York. So, we made it clear to the Attorney General’s office from the very beginning that we would never agree to this type of government-sponsored fishing expedition.”

Airbnb said that it will likely take some time before a judge rules on the motion, during which the company would “continue to work with the Attorney General’s office to make New York and the Airbnb community stronger.”