Churches, houses of worship can now endorse political candidates, IRS rules

Churches and other houses of worship can now officially endorse political candidates to their congregations, the IRS ruled Monday.

This decision comes as an exception to a decades-old ban on political activity by tax-exempt nonprofits.

“The rule is that if you’re a tax-exempt group, whether you’re a charity, a church, a synagogue, or a mosque, you can’t get involved in political campaigning,” David Fahrenthold, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, said on “Seattle’s Morning News.” You can’t endorse candidates. You can’t campaign on behalf of a candidate. What the IRS did last night was create a new exemption. If you’re a house of worship and you’re speaking from the pulpit and you’re speaking to your congregation, not to the public at large, but to the members of your congregation, you can endorse candidates.

“You can oppose a candidate. You can make a political speech from the pulpit to your congregation,” Fahrenthold continued. “That was something the IRS wasn’t really policing before, but now they’re saying, officially, it’s legal.”

This isn’t anything new, Fahrenthold shared, as religious leaders would often share their political viewpoints with their congregations previously. The IRS was “pretty sporadic” about enforcing that rule because it was concerned about overstepping First Amendment grounds related to freedom of religion. Now, it’s officially allowed.

President Donald Trump has long wanted to remove the rule, coined the Johnson Amendment.

“The entire rule says that nonprofits can’t get involved in politics, but in this case, it was in response to a lawsuit filed by some churches in Texas against the IRS, with the church arguing that they don’t think this rule is constitutional,” Fahrenthold said. “It oversteps freedom of religion.”

Public split on IRS’ ruling

The reaction to the exemption to the Johnson Amendment has been mixed.

“There are some people who say, ‘Well, look, this was basically already the rule anyway. The IRS didn’t say it, but this is how they were treating the rule in practice,'” Fahrenthold said. “But there are a lot of folks, including big associations of nonprofits, who really worry about the impact here. They say, ‘Well, this sounds like it’s getting the IRS out of the business of policing what churches say, but it may just make them more involved.'”

Listen to the full conversation here.

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