diff --git a/gracedb/alert.py b/gracedb/alert.py
index 623504c61750970e8559c6fcf42d57bc0868724b..a09cde28dc2e61893a372ab70fb166c796387cf6 100644
--- a/gracedb/alert.py
+++ b/gracedb/alert.py
@@ -77,7 +77,9 @@ def issueAlertForLabel(event, label, doxmpp, serialized_event=None):
 
 def issueEmailAlert(event, event_url):
 
-    # XXX FIXME
+    # The right way of doing this is to make the email alerts filter-able
+    # by search. But this is a low priority dev task. For now, we simply 
+    # short-circuit in case this is an MDC event.
     if event.search and event.search.name == 'MDC':
         return