Talk:Johnson Amendment

Bad Link

"The executive order does not (nor can it[18]) repeal the Johnson Amendment" I read the link 18... vox website, there is no mention of the Johnson Amendment nor of the keyword "501".

Additional sources

There are lots of published opinion pieces about this amendment, and lots of articles about it in sources that aren't reliable. And there probably will be more now that Donald Trump has said - erroneously - that the "Johnson administration" passed this law

Here are some good sources that could be used to expand the article:

• http://www.jstor.org/stable/3512457?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
• http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1982031900
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/06/20/how-can-trump-win-the-many-undecided-evangelicals-we-asked-them/

-- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:18, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Block Quotation from IRS Website

The last paragraph of this block quote does not appear with the preceeding three paragraphs https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/the-restriction-of-political-campaign-intervention-by-section-501-c-3-tax-exempt-organizations assuming it is just a formatting mistake. There is also no std citation. I add quote block with proper tags if you disagree you can revert and continue this discussion. T S Ballantine (talk) 22:07, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

here is more info — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.90.196.227 (talk) 02:10, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Constitutional challenges?

Have any lawsuits ever been filed challenging the constitutionality of this? I can't imagine no one's ever tried that. I mean, I think it would probably pass First Amendment muster as a reasonable time, place and manner restriction (clergy are free to endorse candidates all they want; they just can't do it in church during services, and must do it personally rather than on behalf of the church). But it would be nice to find out and have something about it in the article. Daniel Case (talk) 17:00, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

OK, it seems like there was a case ... Branch Ministries v. Rossotti], 211 F.3d 137 (D.C. Cir., 2000). The court upheld the IRS's revocation of a church's 501(c)(3) status after it had placed two full-page newspaper ads before the 1992 election urging Christians not to vote for Bill Clinton, finding that the Johnson Amendment (well, it didn't call it that, but it was the law in question) neither required the church to act against its religious beliefs to obtain its tax exemption and that there were sufficient alternative channels available to get its political message out.

Also an interesting law-review article asserting that the law does not bar campaigning from the pulpit. And here's another one arguing that the law should treat religious 501(c)(3)s differently and churches should seek from Congress a more narrowly drafted rule. A similar argument here, and here again, arguing that a lot of church activities that relate to politics come into a gray area under this law. Daniel Case (talk) 06:01, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

2018 appropriations bill restricts enforcement

I may be reading this wrong, but it seems that the House passed an appropriations bill that would "prohibit the IRS from denying or revoking the tax-exempt status of churches that engage in political activity, unless approved by the IRS Commissioner and prior notice is given to the House Ways and Means Committee.", effectively defanging the amendment. This seems like relevant information to include in the article. Trambelus (talk) 01:43, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

We'd have to check if that provision made it into the actual version that was signed into law in February 2019. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 02:43, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

The appropriations legislation signed into law in February 2019 was House Joint Resolution 31, which was signed into law on February 15, 2019, and which was assigned Public Law number 116-6. I checked the certified PDF file of what is known as the final "enrolled bill" (although technically it's a "joint resolution", not a "bill"), as published by the U.S. Government Publishing Office, at www dot congress dot gov. This is a searchable PDF document, consisting of 465 pages. I did searches on the word "church", and the exact phrases "Internal Revenue Service", "Ways and Means", and "Johnson Amendment". Although there are, of course, numerous instances of the exact phrase "Internal Revenue Service" in the law, I see no references at all to "Ways and Means" or "church" or "Johnson Amendment".

Conclusion: I see nothing in Public Law no. 116-6 containing the purported prohibition described above.

As far as House of Representatives Bill 6147 (H.R. 6147), which is referenced in the link to the lexology dot com web site, I am still checking on this. Famspear (talk) 18:07, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

OK, I found what the lexology web site may have been referring to: House of Representatives Bill 6147 (H.R. 6147) in the last session of Congress - the 115th Congress. The 115th session ended in December 2018, and Congress came into the 116th Session in January 2019.

According to a summary of H.R. 6147 at congress dot gov, section 112 of the bill would have prohibited the IRS from “using funds provided by this division to determine that a church, an integrated auxiliary of a church, or a convention or association of churches is not exempt from taxation for participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign unless the IRS Commissioner consents, Congress is notified, and the determination is effective no earlier than 90 days after congressional notification.”

H.R. 6147 was passed by the House with amendments on July 19, 2018. The Senate approved an amended version of the House amended version on August 1, 2018, but the House and Senate never agreed on a final version of the bill. Thus, the bill was not enacted into law. Famspear (talk) 19:43, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

This was the exact wording of the proposal:

"None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Internal Revenue Service to deny tax exemption under section 501(a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 with respect to a church, an integrated auxiliary of a church, or a convention or association of churches for participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office unless--

"(1) the Commissioner of Internal Revenue determines that the exemption should be denied;

"(2) not later than 30 days after such determination, the Commissioner notifies the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Finance of the Senate of such determination; and

"(3) such denial is effective not earlier than 90 days after the date of the notification under paragraph (2)."

Had this language been enacted, it would not have repealed the Johnson Amendment at all. It apparently would have required that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue personally make the Johnson Amendment determination for each case. (Under the current law, the determination can be made, and generally is made, by a lower level officer or employee of the IRS.) And, the requirement for notifying the Ways and Means and Finance committees would not have changed the rule of the Johnson Amendment, either. Famspear (talk) 20:04, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

References