{"id":25404,"date":"2019-09-12T09:59:23","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T13:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=25404"},"modified":"2019-09-12T11:07:42","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T15:07:42","slug":"first-amendment-rights-good-news-from-the-irs-on-donor-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/25404\/first-amendment-rights-good-news-from-the-irs-on-donor-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"First Amendment Rights: Good News from the IRS on Donor Privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this era of increased harassment and persecution<\/a> of people on the basis of political viewpoints and First Amendment expression, there\u2019s actually good news to report.<\/p>\n

In fact, that positive development comes from none other than the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which few people typically consider a font of good news.<\/p>\n

Specifically, the IRS just announced a proposed rule<\/a> to stop requiring nonprofit organizations to file what\u2019s known as a Form 990 Schedule B, which exposes sensitive donor information not only to the federal government and potential rogues like former IRS official Lois Lerner, but also people who seek to access and use that information to target people on the basis of political belief.<\/p>\n

As we at CFIF have long asserted<\/a>, this welcome move will help protect the privacy of American citizens, which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in NAACP v. Alabama (1958)<\/a><\/em> is critical to preservation and exercise of the First Amendment\u2019s rights to free speech, freedom of association and freedom to petition government:<\/p>\n

Effective advocacy of both public and private points of view, particularly controversial ones, is undeniably enhanced by group association, as this Court has more than once recognized by remarking upon the close nexus between the freedoms of speech and assembly.\u00a0 It is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the \u2018liberty\u2019 assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech\u2026\u00a0 This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one\u2019s associations\u2026
\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Supreme Court in that seminal ruling rightly drew a straight-line connection between privacy of one\u2019s associations and donations and the ability to exercise one\u2019s First Amendment freedoms:<\/p>\n

[R]evelation of the identity of its rank-and-file members has exposed these members to economic reprisal, loss of employment, threat of physical coercion, and other manifestations of public hostility.\u00a0 Under these circumstances, we think it apparent that compelled disclosure of petitioner\u2019s Alabama membership is likely to affect adversely the ability of petitioner and its members to pursue their collective effort to foster beliefs which they admittedly have the right to advocate, in that it may induce members to withdraw from the Association and dissuade others from joining it because of fear of exposure of their beliefs shown through their associations and of the consequences of this exposure.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That logic applies with even greater force today, as we\u2019ve witnessed time after time, because of the modern ability to instantly identify, locate and stalk people whose political views one finds disagreeable.<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve further noted<\/a>, the IRS acknowledges that it doesn\u2019t even use the collected information for any substantive purpose in enforcing the nation\u2019s tax laws, and the IRS isn\u2019t even the agency in charge of enforcing so-called \u201ccampaign finance reform\u201d laws in any case.\u00a0 Accordingly, the information only serves to expose people to potential targeting.<\/p>\n

CFIF enthusiastically supports this IRS decision, which will help protect the right of American citizens to exercise their First Amendment rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this era of increased harassment and persecution of people on the basis of political viewpoints and First Amendment expression, there\u2019s actually good news to report. In fact, that positive development comes from none other than the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which few people typically consider a font of good news. Specifically, the IRS just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4872,716,5082,735,5031],"class_list":["post-25404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-donor-privacy","tag-first-amendment","tag-form-990","tag-irs","tag-schedule-b"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25404"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25408,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25404\/revisions\/25408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}