"This is a victory, and we're pleased with this development in which the IRS has proved to our satisfaction that it now has in place a protocol to enforce its own anti-electioneering provisions," said [Freedom From Religion] co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor....("Flaunting." Somebody — AP or FFRF — made the old flouting/flaunting mistake.)
The FFRF argued that churches and other religious organizations have become increasingly more involved in political campaigns, "blatantly and deliberately flaunting the electioneering restrictions."
Anyway, the point is — as we know from the big IRS scandal about Tea Party groups — if a group is too political, it doesn't qualify for a tax exemption. The same degree of enforcement should apply to all groups who seek tax-exempt status, whether they are conservative or liberal and whether they are religious or secular.
The IRS had said publicly in 2012 that it was not investigating complaints of partisan political activity by churches, leaving religious groups who make direct or thinly veiled endorsements of political candidates unchallenged.Perhaps you think religious organizations should get special treatment from the IRS or, at least, you may not be comfortable with this issue getting resolved in a settlement between the IRS and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. I prefer applying the same rules to everyone and not giving special deference to religious groups, but the Religious Freedom Restoration Action requires the federal government to justify substantial burdens on religion with a compelling interest and narrow tailoring, as we saw in the Hobby Lobby case.
You can't expect the Freedom From Religion Foundation to push that point, however, and nothing about this settlement prevents other parties from raising that question in their own lawsuits. In any event, the IRS has a moratorium on investigations right now, but it will be interesting to see what happens in the future with this FFRF-satisfying "protocol" if some church that's used to telling its parishioners how to vote gets surprised by a deprivation of its tax-exempt status.
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When will the first black church be penalized? It's far past time to end the IRS and fund the government by other means.
The solution, going forward, to the IRS determinations of tax exempt status of organizations is to eliminate that status for all groups. Tax them all, or tax none of them.
... it will be interesting to see what happens in the future with this FFRF-satisfying "protocol" if some church that's used to telling its parishioners how to vote gets surprised by a deprivation of its tax-exempt status
I've never sat in the pews of a church that invites politicians in to speak to the congregation, but I certainly get the impression when I see reports of such behavior that they are telling their congregation how to vote. I wonder if in reality they are more subtle about it and put out disclaimers in the announcements or something. I know the Roman Catholic church I attend is very careful about crossing that line. They publish things in the bulletin about social justice issues but they never mention a party or a candidate and they always include a sentence that one must "vote their own conscience." One time a parishioner was running for mayor and put her campaign flyers on the windshields of cars in the parking lot during mass. The priest nearly had a seizure. Have never seen him so upset. He denounced it from the pulpit and in the bulletin and emphasized the fact that in no way was there any endorsement of any candidate.
Do some churches have to toe the line more than other churches?
Ann,
It depends upon what exactly is meant by 'being involved in politics'. Does it extend to speech from the pulpit? Does it extend to what is taught in Sunday School classes? Can the IRS remove or penalize religious groups for following long established doctrine concerning abortion, sexual conduct, gender roles, caring for the poor, widows and orphans, etc? Just who draws the lines between what is allowed and what is not?
The worst "offenders' are traditional Black churches. There is no way Obama or Holder will allow this to happen.
"Too political..." that's the rub isn't it? The twilight zone between somewhat political (Given the progressive mindset one may fairly ask what isn't.) and "too political" breeds monsters.
It would be nice if religious institutions got the same scrutiny as grassroots conservative nonprofits, but it won't happen given the history of Black church leaders and politicking. The REVEREND Al Sharpton, the REVEREND Jesse Jackson, MINISTER Farrakhan, and a host of other reverends, most reverends, right reverends, imams, mullahs, preachers, doctors of divinity, what have you, carry the title for reasons that aren't purely religious. So congrats to the FFRF, but only if universally applied!
If this rule were to be strictly and evenly enforced Black churches would be hardest hit. Now who wants to argue that this rule will be impartially enforced?
The sentence ' Can the IRS remove or penalize religious groups ...' should read ' Can the IRS remove the tax-exempt status or penalize religious groups ... '
I suspect that leaving religious organizations alone is not a politically neutral decision.
We so often hear about supposedly right-wing evangelical Christian religious organizations. Probably because the New York Times likes them as a bogeyman.
But that's not where the real action is, in church politics. The real action is with the black churches, organizing and turning out their, uh, constituents at election time.
It would be impossible to find any Republican-demographic corollary to places like Detroit, where Obama won more than 98% of the vote. Certainly not in the United States. I don't think Stalin got 98% of the vote. Does Castro get 98%? The Ayatollahs don't get 98% of the vote. Kim Jong Un is the only guy who gets more than 98%.
what jdallen said.
The IRS should be a mechanism for raising tax revenue in a politically neutral way. Period. They shouldn't ever have to judge whether speech falls into category "a" or "b".
"It depends upon what exactly is meant by 'being involved in politics'. Does it extend to speech from the pulpit? Does it extend to what is taught in Sunday School classes?"
Yes it does. Unless the preacher / speaker is a democratic president, then apparently the political message of the church's implied of explicit endorsement is A-OK.
Or if the religious group meets in a mosque, then no investigators will go in. So really, this is freedom from Christians and Jews protocol. Hmm...that sounds a little odd...
There is certain amount of issue advocacy that is *currently* allowed (e.g., preaching Leviticus rules agains bestiality is ok).
Professor, what did you think about this sentence from the AP?
"The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which says it has 19,000 members nationwide, frequently files lawsuits challenging potential violations of the separation of church and state."
How exactly does one violate "the separation of church and state"? As most elementary-level students of the constitution know, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution about any such "separation." There are the two clauses from the First Amendment; the first indicating that Congress shall make no law "respecting the establishment of religion" and the very next clause indicating that Congress shall also make no law "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion.
The FFRF is pretty much all about the "establishment" clause. Would the public be less sympathetic to the FFRF if they knew the true constitutional language?
They ain't talkin bout the black churches.
This sounds like the same sue-and-settle garbage that environmental groups and the EPA use to create new regulations out of whole cloth. Can't get the radical laws we want passed legislatively? We'll just do it administratively and get a court to agree.
The right better learn lawfare pretty quick, or we'll have no Republic left worth conserving.
The trouble was donor lists requested and then targeted with audits.
It's dangerous to support a conservative organization, being the intended message. Be conservative only in the privacy of your own closet.
Anyone remember Al Bore in the pulpit?
"When will the first black church be penalized?"
Never. Maybe when one endorses a Republican.
I'm pretty much a free speech absolutist, but the special thing about churches is that we (that is, our democratically elected Congress) allow contributions to churches to be deducted from income before calculating taxes. That's a very valuable benefit to the churches, that is not granted to ostensibly-political groups. The price of the benefit is that churches are not supposed to get directly involved in "telling people how to vote". That doesn't (or shouldn't) prevent churches from preaching on moral issues, such as abortion, gay rights, social justice, etc., but it ought to prevent them from explicitly supporting particular candidates or a particular party.
Sorry this comes up in the context of activities by an anti-religion group, but as a pro-religion person, I think churches do themselves and their adherents no favor by getting involved in politics.
"It depends upon what exactly is meant by 'being involved in politics'…"
I think the main issue is the need for one standard of what it means and applying that standard across the board.
If the IRS isn't willing to go after religious tax exemptions because it seems untoward to investigate this form of speech and penalize it, then let the non-religious groups have the same leeway.
I think anyone who wanders around the typical university campus will be able to detect at least one type of tax-exempt nonprofit where the politicking is pretty heavy. So Prof. Althouse's concerns about favorable treatment for churches seem ill-founded.
Religion in politics, a Wilberforce to be reckoned with.
The fight to stop religion in politics, what's the next move?
Martin Luther King me!
Religion in politics, it's a new Dorothy Day.
If a belief in atheism is "sincere and meaningful", a strong argument can be made that atheism is itself a "religion" as defined in the Seeger and Welsh cases.
If so, the Freedom from Religion Foundation is in fact a "religious organization" and should not be involved in politics.
Religion is political. The tax exempt church is balanced by also making educational institutions tax exempt.
It is the donor's deductibility that is the issue, since the groups can never make a profit by choice.
The education of voters becomes the Dem issue, since they need it stopped or socialism may be slandered.
The worst offenders are secular religious groups (e.g. Planned Parenthood, ACLU, NAACP, SPLC, etc.), but since their moral plays are considered to serve a "greater good", they are exempt from FFRF scrutiny.
I remember the recording Bishop Morlino had played (or read, your priest had no choice) to all local Catholic congregations ahead of the 2006 Marriage Amendment vote.
His words were more subtle during his statements during the Walker recall, but I attended a mass that I felt surprised that he needed to chime in about it.
Many churches (rightly) make a distinction between the political and the moral. Thus, we see churches advocating against abortion or same-sex marriage, for example, but we generally don't see them advocating for or against tax policy or environmental policy. I think the distinction is appropriate, though it can become fuzzy at the edges.
Sean makes an interesting point. Higher Ed is arguably the most politicized organization in the country or at least in the top 3 (Big Education, Big Media and Big Labor). Why does the university’s tax exempt status remain unchallenged? Especially when the people who are in charge of this institution are openly political and advocate not just for causes but for individuals and parties. It may be argued that “contributions” in the form of tuition and fee payments are not tax deductible, but the activities inside the university, such as the endowments are shielded from taxes, and university endowments total hundreds of billions of dollars. I have argued that in times of financial need, when the country is running seventeen trillion in debt, Big Education should be willing to do its share. Especially in view of the fact that the people who make their very, very comfortable (some would say extravagant) living off the money that flows through their bloated, and some would say corrupt, system all seem to want to tax the people outside of their gates more.
Perhaps a modest 5% … no, make it 10% … of their income should be sent off to the Treasury. For the children.
We frequently speak of constitutional violations in terms that don't appear in the Constitution. Think of the other structural issues: separation of powers, federalism, sovereign immunity, justiciability, standing, judicial review, commandeering, etc.
Constitutional doctrine is full of paraphrasing and glosses on the constitutional language.
Just because you prefer a narrow interpretation of the Establishment Clause doesn't make this argument about "separation of church and state" any better than innumerable arguments that could be made in this form.
Tax exemption should be a matter of function, not political activity. As others have pointed out, public universities and private universities with tax-exempt status are likewise profligately political in exactly the same fashion as even the most reckless of religious foundations and churches.
And again, as others have pointed out, this lawsuit reeks of the sort of loaded-deck lawfare that the EPA specializes in, recruiting like-minded "third party" litigants to "make" them enact novel regulation as the result of lawsuits directed against their own agencies.
When the range of action allowed to a regulatory agency is universal, that agency's arrogated power of discretion is inherently corrupting.
If the IRS isn't willing to go after religious tax exemptions because it seems untoward to investigate this form of speech and penalize it, then let the non-religious groups have the same leeway."
This reminds me of something I read recently by Megan McArdle.
"I think a few things are going on here. The first is that while the religious right views religion as a fundamental, and indeed essential, part of the human experience, the secular left views it as something more like a hobby, so for them it’s as if a major administrative rule was struck down because it unduly burdened model-train enthusiasts. "
Sorry, that first statement in my post was supposed to be quoting our hostess, Ann Althouse. Writing from my phone screwed that up.
I only wrote the one sentence that starts with This.
The rest is either quoting Ann or Megan.
Call me when DOJ starts investigating black churches for "getting out the vote."
Perhaps we could roll back some of the interference of churches in American society? You know, by first reinstating slavery?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Unless its a Progressive Congress and President attacking their political opponents for secular reasons. Then it's OK to abridge all of their 1st Amendment rights with the tax code.
That's in the Constitution, right?
All of the 1st Amendment protections have been destroyed, inverted and subverted by Progressives using the tax code in regard's to religious organizations, which, when it comes down to it, are just groups of people. Only a lawyer can come up with the right sounding bullshit to justify it.
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