M.D.Fla.: Reporting requirements for real estate transactions under Bank Secrecy Act do not violate 4A

The financial reporting requirements for real estate transactions under the Bank Secrecy Act satisfy the statutory requirements which are more onerous than the Fourth Amendment requires under Shultz. Therefore, there’s no Fourth Amendment violation. An inquiry can be made, as with administrative warrants, with just official curiosity. Fid. Nat’l Fin., Inc. v. Bessent, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 33478 (M.D. Fla. Feb. 19, 2026):

C. The Fourth Amendment

Lastly, Plaintiffs argue that the Rule violates the Fourth Amendment under California Bankers Association v. Shultz, which they contend was misread in the R&R. Whereas Shultz requires compulsory reporting requirements to be “reasonably relevant” to the improper transactions they target, 416 U.S. at 67, Plaintiffs claim that the Rule targets too broad a class of transactions without any evidence of wrongdoing. Shultz’s relevancy constraints, however, are no tighter than those already imposed by 31 U.S.C. § 5318(g)(1), (5)(D)(ii)(I), which authorize the Secretary to require the reporting of suspicious transactions so long as they are “relevant to” possible violations of law or regulations. Indeed, the domestic regulations at issue in Shultz—which targeted a class of transactions without requiring any individualized assessment—swiftly passed Fourth Amendment scrutiny despite having no statutorily prescribed nexus to possible violations of law. Even after assuming that “the regulations [in Shultz] require[d banks] to obtain information from a customer simply because the Government want[ed] it,” the Court there had “no difficulty” finding the Fourth Amendment satisfied because the regulations were “within the authority of the agency, the demand [wa]s not too indefinite and the information sought [wa]s reasonably relevant.” 416 U.S. at 66-67 (quotation omitted). Given, therefore, that this Court has already found that the Rule falls within FinCEN’s more onerous statutory constraints, Shultz cannot backdoor-in a Fourth Amendment violation. Cf. Nat’l Small Bus. United v. U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury, 161 F.4th 1323, 1334 (11th Cir. 2025) (rejecting similar Fourth Amendment argument where the “information [] require[d was sufficiently described and limited in nature and [wa]s no more detailed than the reports in Shultz.” (quotation omitted)). After all, “corporations can claim no equality with individuals in the enjoyment of a right to privacy. … Even if one were to regard the request for information in this case as caused by nothing more than official curiosity, nevertheless law-enforcing agencies have a legitimate right to satisfy themselves that corporate behavior is consistent with the law and the public interest.” Shultz, 416 U.S. at 65-66 (quoting United States v. Morton Salt Co., 338 U.S. 632, 652 (1950)). Plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment objections will be overruled accordingly.