That’s a good point, and one I hadn’t thought of. It’s especially relevant to the recent Supreme Court decision equating speech and spending. If churches end up with the right to endorse a candidate from the pulpit, they may well also have the right to endorse them from the checking account.
Maybe, but why’d they do it last year then?
Here’s an article from 2011 discussing the same thing.
I can’t find any followups though. I guess the IRS yawned.
Unless something big has changed that I haven’t noticed, 501(c)(3)'s of all stripes cannot engage in electioneering – endorsements, contributions, or whathaveyou.
In a larger sense, I’m not quite following why a religious organization should be able to engage in electioneering, but secular charities continue to be prohibited from those same activities. It seems to me that the laws against partisan political activity are equally applied to churches and secular charitable institutions today.
Overturning the ban on political activity for churches would be a strong basis from which to eliminate the ban on political activity by all other charities. Do we really want to further reduce the ability of the government to regulate campaign contributions? Is this actually what is good for the country?
You may not have been trying, but you sure succeeded in flailing. This is the most ridiculous tripe I’ve seen in ages.
It’s not ridiculous at all. If this ends up allowing churches to endorse political candidates and at the same time maintain their tax exempt status and allows parishioners to continue to deduct their donations (and admittedly that’s a big if), then by the logic of Citizen’s United, if they can speak their endorsement they can also spend on their endorsement. Or so they will eventually claim if they haven’t thought of it already.
OK. Do you think that explicit electioneering by a religious organization would make it a 501(c)(4) group with it being subject to tax for income spent on those activities? That is a reasonable position. From where I’m sitting though it appears that some of these churches want to remain 501(c)(3) groups but without any limitations on speech - and remember since Citizen’s United that spending is speech too. I may be wrong but I’m not in crazytown.
Not remotely ridiculous. The American Family Association is a nonprofit that “promotes conservative fundamentalist Christian values.” Because they’re a 501(c)(3), they can’t endorse specific candidates.
But imagine a law were passed saying that if you were a church, you COULD retain 501(c)(3) status and endorse candidates. Monty, are you seriously suggesting that AFA wouldn’t change their structure so that they were a church? What impediments to such a change do you see?
They could make that change, and then they could accept unlimited donations–as they do now–only instead of those tax-exempt donations being used for general hatemongering, they could be used for political ads. Of course that’s what would happen.
I’d like to reiterate my question from earlier. adaher, by seeking 501(c)(3) status, churches voluntarily agree to other restrictions, e.g., not selling retail goods for a profit. Are you also arguing that they should be able to have 501(c)(3) status and also run retail stores for profit? If not, what’s the significant difference?
Maybe I missed it earlier, or misinterpreted your posts, but you seem to be happy that the challenge is being made and you wish a final decision be done by the courts, but, as far as I’ve seen, you haven’t taken a side on the actual decision. Do you think the IRS rule is unconstitutional? Do you think that the rule is only unconstitutional as applied to churches, or is it for all tax exempt groups? And should Walz get a second look if you think the rule is unconstituitonal?
And how far? Should churches be allowed to contribute to campaigns? Can we look forward to the Catholic Church spending millions to influence our elections?
I just question what harm was being done before 1954 that required the law to be changed. As far as I can tell, none, and none is done today, because churches do engage in politics and there’s little or no enforcement.
Good point. I, for one, would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Monty, isn’t that a little inflammatory? I’m a reasonable guy, and I think he had a good point. Like Left Hand said, every organization with “Family” in its name (in other words, evil organizations) will suddenly become a church, and some churches will branch out into the super-PAC business. I don’t think that’s ridiculous at all; I think it would be a sure thing.
But now churches, for the most part, don’t endorse candidates now. They have to tiptoe up to the line, and most try not to cross it. What they’re hoping to gain is to erase the line completely.
They crossed the line last year, and nothing happened. If a church really wants to cross the line, they’re apparently free to do so. Odds are the IRS wouldn’t do anything. The church, therefore wins; they keep their tax exempt status and get to say whatever they want. If the IRS ever does step in, then they have grounds for a lawsuit and they can get the supreme court hearing that they apparently want.
Crossing the line en masse in a public display of disobedience simply to force the court case seems counter to their best interests. If they lose and the IRS makes a habit of enforcing this rule, they’re going to look silly.
Do you question this to the extent that you’ve done any research on the subject? The harm that would be done by it now seems pretty clear to me: our political process is already widely mistrusted, and an overwhelming majority of Americans want to limit the influence of money in politics. A legal interpretation that relaxes the rules on money in politics would only worsen this situation.
But if you’re serious in your historical curiosity, I encourage you to check newspaper archives to find out why the change was made in 1954. It didn’t happen randomly, after all: the folks who passed this law over half a century ago had a reason for doing so.
I, for one, wish to join the Most Holy Church of Costco.
But the problem is that many churches do not want to be the defendant in question, so they restrict their speech. A rarely enforced law is still a sword hanging over their heads, chilling their speech.
Let’s be perfectly clear: their speech is chilled, not by a fear of jackbooted government thugs, but by a desire to keep their preferential tax status. They could easily obey the same rules as everyone else and pay the same taxes as everyone else. The unfairness isn’t that they can’t speak politically: the unfairness is that they, unlike the rest of us, get a choice between speaking politically and paying taxes. Their complaint is that this unfairness in their favor isn’t sufficiently in their favor.
You would have thought the Catholic Church would have learned their lesson in Germany.
I don’t follow. The term “church” is specifically found but not defined in IRS literature. But even there we’re told that “the organization must be organized and operated
exclusively for religious, educational, scientific, or other
charitable purposes,” and “the organization may not intervene in political
campaigns, and” and you seem to be arguing that we should get rid of those requirements. So what’s left and why isn’t adding “under God” a perfectly acceptable way to make myself a Church if political campaigning is now allowed?
The current policy is that a religious/charitable organization must " exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition (but only if no part of its activities involve the provision of athletic facilities or equipment), or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals, no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual, no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting to influence legislation (except as otherwise provided in subsection (i)), and which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office."
But, again, you seem to want to get rid of that. So if we get rid of that, why is tacking on “under God” not sufficient? My new religion is one that says that Obama should be President. Maybe I’ll start a new religions which doesn’t just say that, but whose entire theology revolves around how Obama should be President. Give me tax breaks and let my congregants get tax deductions for contributions. If not, why not?
The current rules for charities and non profitis are that it can’t be an ‘action organization’, but you seem to be fine with getting rid of that clause. I may have missed it if you cited it in this thread, but what exactly is left for our definition of “religious organization”. What would be wrong with setting up a church explicitly only to cherrypick those pieces of the Gospel which I thought helped a candidate, reading those weekly, and ending each sermon with 'And so now go out and vote for Candidate X?" Or what’s wrong with writing a whole new Gospel, the Gospel According to Finn, where I just write in some stuff about how Obama should be president?
This article on the history of tax-exempt status for churches seems pretty good to me. The part about lobbying begins on page 421.
Note that the original reasoning for TE status is that churches and other groups would, through charity, promote social goods. When a church’s activities overreach and stop being primarily about promoting social goods (which is defined so broadly here that saving immortal souls counts, but I digress), the church can lose its TE status–not as a means to gag the church, but because it’s no longer serving the purpose that got the church its status in the first place. The case they describe in detail is United States v. Christian Echoes National Ministry (1972). This ministry, which engaged in pervasive political activity, eventually lost their tax-exempt status due to their unwillingness to engage in the activities that grant that status.
Since when do most churches make that endorsement? Churches are the major pushers of bigotry against gays and lesbians in this country.
From reading about that case, it sounds to me like the courts have already decided on this issue. Christian Echoes was decided by the Tenth Circuit, and the Supreme Court refused to take it on, so it seems like it’s a pretty good precedent for the court challenge that ADF here is trying to start.
The court ruling says specifically that taking away tax-exempt status is not a violation of free speech First Amendment rights. Is the ADF unaware of this? They seem to be setting themselves up to be slapped down hard.