The boards of several co-ops along Park Avenue in the lower 60s will avoid having to hand over documents about the social lives of their residents as part of a lawsuit.

A federal judge, Deborah Batts of U.S. District Court, threw out subpoenas that a neighboring Christian Scientist church had issued to co-op boards at 570, 575, and 580 Park Ave. The subpoenas primarily sought information about any efforts that residents had made to contact local public officials in a bid to stop the church from hosting large galas. But the subpoenas also appeared to seek information about any social events that the co-op boards knew to have occurred in the buildings.

At issue in the underlying lawsuit is whether the city is illegally discriminating against the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, by trying to stop it from renting itself out as a party venue. The city has revoked a license approving the building for catered events.

In court papers, the church, which is at 63rd Street and Park Avenue, argues that the city wants to stop the parties only to placate nearby co-op residents seeking to end the influx of revelers into the neighborhood. The events hosted at the church have included fashion shows and law firm parties, and guests have included Mayor Bloomberg and President Clinton.

The church claims that without the revenue it makes as an event space, its congregation will not be able to afford to keep the Georgian-style building it has inhabited for more than 80 years.

The city, in legal papers, has said the catered events are so frequent that the building has become primarily a commercial space, not a house of worship. In May the city stripped the building of nearly all the tax exemptions it received as a house of worship.

The church has subpoenaed other churches, including St. Ignatius Loyola and Riverside, as well as at least one private club, the Metropolitan Club, in an effort to prove that other institutions also routinely rent out its building to outside groups.

In one court affidavit filed with the case, the general manager of the Metropolitan, Anthony Nuttall, concedes the point. Lawyers for the institution, whose first president was the banker J. Pierpont Morgan, included as court exhibits several minutes of club board meetings and newspaper clippings from the late 1950s.

The papers indicate some of the parties hosted there at the time: a debutante’s cotillion, an event by a trial lawyers association, a dinner for a vice admiral, and a reception for the premier of Italy.