Apparently swept up in Olympic fervor from the 2018 Winter Games, Eleventh Circuit Court Judge Robin Rosenbaum launched a recent opinion upholding a trial court with a stirring recitation of the U.S. Olympic hockey team's “miracle” win over the Soviet Union in 1980, complete with a mini-profile—via footnote—of U.S. coach Herb Brooks. “Our history contains many such stories of triumphs over long odds,” wrote Rosenbaum, with the concurrence of Judge Charles Wilson and Maryland District Judge Roger Titus, sitting by designation. “This, however, is not one of those.” Acknowledging the “creative arguments” Wellington, Florida, lawyer Michael Presley and his firm raised in an effort to shield their financial records from the Internal Revenue Service, including escrow and trust accounts, Rosenbaum proceeded to dismantle them. Attorney Michael Presley and his family firm, Presley Law & Associates, sought to quash IRS summonses for firm accounts, arguing their clients' information was protected by the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment and by the Florida Constitution's right to privacy protections. Rosenbaum's opinion said long-settled U.S. Supreme Court holdings “completely foreclose" plaintiffs' arguments. Presley's son and firm partner, Robert Presley, said in an email that, while they were disappointed by the ruling, “ we are investigating our options of filing a motion for reconsideration as the court's decision may reveal a fallacy.” As detailed in the opinion and underlying court pleadings, the case began in 2016 when the IRS issued summonses for the financial records of Presley, his wife, Presley Law and the BMP Family Partnership as part of an audit. Presley moved to quash the summonses for the trust and escrow accounts in Florida's Southern District Court, writing that the Fourth Amendment's search and seizure provisions should shield the firm's client information because the clients were not under investigation. Florida federal court rulings also established that federal law does not preempt Florida's Constitution, which “protects the financial information of persons if there is no relevant or compelling reason to compel disclosure,” the plaintiffs' petition said. The government moved to dismiss, and in 2017 Judge Robin Rosenberg of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida complied, ruling that the U.S Supreme Court's 1964 decision in U.S. v. Powell held that IRS summonses are “presumptively enforceable” if the information sought is for a legitimate and relevant purpose, is not already in the IRS's possession and that the summonses were issued in accordance with the IRS Code. The Presley summonses complied, she wrote, while adding that neither Presley's firm nor its clients had a “reasonable expectation of privacy in records maintained by a third-party bank.” In upholding the trial court, Rosenbaum wrote that although “some debate exists” over whether plaintiffs have standing to assert claims for the rights of third parties—in this case, the firm's clients—“settled precedent requires us to conclude that the plaintiffs' clients lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in financial records held by the bank,” and that the IRS had satisfied the Powell requirements. As to the state privacy claims, “there is no question that the constitutional provision granting a privacy interest in bank records would substantially impede the IRS's ability to summon bank records pursuant to the Internal Revenue Code,” she said. “State law does not apply here because under the Supremacy Clause, state laws that conflict with federal laws by impeding the 'full purposes' of Congress must give way as preempted.” In seeking to quash the summonses, Presley had argued that the case raised issues of first impression that should be explored, and Robert Presley said those issues remain. “This is a case involving trust accounts, and the money held within them do not belong to the investigated parties but their clients,” he said. “If their clients have no rights under the [IRS] Code and Powell test because of the focus being on the investigated parties, then the ability of the court to claim that the code preempts their rights guaranteed by the Florida Constitution appears tenuous, but that is an issue that will need to be investigated and researched before pressing forward.”