Legal Group Hopes Pastors Will Help Effort to Overturn Tax Law
A legal advocacy group is asking preachers to break the law by taking a stand on political candidates on Sept. 28.
The Alliance Defense Fund hopes cooperating clergy will provoke an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service and set up a test case to challenge the tax law, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The tax law passed in 1954 bars nonprofits, including churches, from endorsing candidates or intervening in elections. Churches that don’t comply may lose their tax-exempt status. The IRS announced in April that its priority is to enforce the law and to educate churches and charities about the provisions, TaxProf Blog reported last month.
Branch Ministries unsuccessfully challenged the law in 2000 after it took out newspaper ads opposing the candidacy of Bill Clinton. It lost its case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. But Notre Dame law professor Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer told the Wall Street Journal that a new test case could be successful. The claim would be that the law unconstitutionally bars the free exercise of religion.
The Alliance Defense Fund is also bringing lawsuits on a different topic. In New York, it is representing plaintiffs in three suits that seek to bar recognition of gay marriages performed elsewhere.
