Denying tax-exempt status to faith groups that endorse political candidates violates the constitutional rights of congregations, the Trump administration claimed in a recent court filing.
The U.S. Justice Department made the argument in a brief submitted Sept. 21 in National Religious Broadcasters et al. v. Scott Bessent et al., a 2024 lawsuit that seeks to exempt religious groups from the Johnson Amendment, a federal law that bars tax-exempt organizations from participation in political campaigns.
In addition to NRB, the other plaintiffs in the case are Sands Springs Church, a former Baptist congregation in Texas, First Baptist Church in Waskom, Texas, and Intercessors of America.
The lawsuit and a proposed settlement between plaintiffs and President Donald Trump’s Internal Revenue Service allowing a special exemption for faith groups was dismissed by a federal judge in March. Both parties appealed the decision to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has yet to rule in the case.
The DOJ brief asks the appellate court to reverse the district judge’s conclusion that federal law prohibits approval of the settlement. The brief also agrees with the provision of the settlement describing the Johnson Amendment as government meddling in purely religious affairs by limiting congregations’ free-speech rights.
“Any IRS enforcement action under the Johnson Amendment against such speech would run headlong into the church autonomy doctrine, which prevents civil courts from adjudicating ecclesiastical matters,” the brief says.
Traditionally, the church autonomy doctrine — also known as the ecclesial abstention doctrine — has been used to limit judicial power in regard to internal ecclesiastical affairs and to protect the right of religious groups to make decisions on matters of congregational government and spiritual teaching.
In this case, those matters include the preaching, teaching and publications of faith groups in addition to their ability to endorse or invite candidates to address members, the brief says: “The church autonomy doctrine broadly covers a church’s internal communications regarding matters of faith and sermons delivered during worship services. Accordingly, the government could not prevail in enforcing the Johnson Amendment against the worship-service speech described in the consent judgment.”
But that argument “should be rejected as forfeited and meritless,” Americans United for Separation of Church and State says in a brief supporting dismissal of the settlement between the IRS and plaintiffs. “The church autonomy doctrine does not apply here. It does not grant general immunity from secular laws like the Johnson Amendment.”
Instead, a faith group is entitled to invoke the doctrine as an immunity defense in cases where religious questions may arise in legal disputes. “An IRS enforcement action to collect taxes from appellant churches for endorsing or opposing a political candidate is very unlikely to raise such a question. Thus, it is far from certain that the IRS would lose in such a case or this one,” the brief says.
The AU filing agrees with the district court that the Tax Anti-Injunction and Declaratory Judgment acts bar approval of the settlement proposal and points out that the plaintiffs have neither violated the amendment nor lost tax-exempt status. “Appellants lack standing because their alleged injury-in-fact relies on a ‘speculative chain of possibilities’ that ‘require guesswork as to how independent decisionmakers will exercise their judgment.’”
Tax-free donations to charities should be used for charitable purposes instead of politics, Americans United President Rachel Laser said.
“The Trump administration’s proposed settlement agreement to exempt only houses of worship and not secular nonprofits would have treated religion and nonreligion unequally and violated church-state separation,” she said. “It also would have been unhealthy for our democracy because it would allow churches to become unaccountable political action committees capable of injecting billions of dollars of dark money into our elections.”
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