Scaling down a legal fight with the White House, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York has agreed to drop a request for documents about the government’s requirement of insurance coverage for birth control, a court filing on Monday said.

The archdiocese sent a subpoena to President Barack Obama’s administration in February asking for documents from White House staff, including Obama himself, for use in a church lawsuit against the contraception mandate.

Citing the burden involved and calling a subpoena of the president’s office inappropriate, the White House asked a federal judge to toss out the subpoena on April 4.

A notice filed in U.S. District Court in Washington late on Monday said the archdiocese agreed to withdraw its subpoena. It did not say why.

A lawyer for the archdiocese declined to comment on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Justice Department, which represented the White House in court, had no immediate comment.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/23/us-usa-courts-obama-idUSBRE93M17H20130423