Texas judge rejects push to let churches make political endorsements

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A federal judge in Tyler dismissed a lawsuit on Tuesday that sought to allow churches to endorse political candidates without losing their tax-exempt status, dealing a blow to the Trump administration and other conservatives who have worked to eliminate the decades-old law barring nonprofits from supporting political office seekers.

Several Texas churches and national Christian groups brought the lawsuit challenging the Johnson Amendment, as it’s commonly known, arguing that their religious beliefs compelled them to speak to their congregations about all aspects of life, including electoral politics. Prohibiting electioneering from the pulpit in order to maintain their tax exemption was a violation of their First Amendment rights, the plaintiffs argued in their lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.

In the final days of the Biden administration, the Department of Justice sought to dismiss the case. The Trump administration not only revived it, but sided with the plaintiffs. The two sides asked the judge to approve a deal in which the IRS agreed to not enforce the Johnson Amendment against these churches.

This would have been a landmark ruling, empowering pastors to more aggressively push politics through the church and undercutting the requirement that has been a mainstay of the U.S. tax code since 1954. It is named after then-Texas Sen. Lyndon Johnson, who first proposed the law.

But District Judge Cam Barker ruled that he did not have the authority to approve the proposed consent judgement. He cited federal laws that prevent judges from blocking taxation that hasn’t yet occurred; plaintiffs typically must pay the taxes they want to challenge, and then sue for a refund.

Barker, a Trump appointee who previously served as Texas’ deputy solicitor general, rejected the argument that these restrictions did not apply because both sides had agreed to the judgement.

“Relief enjoining the Johnson Amendment’s enforcement or declaring that it does not apply to specific conduct would thus directly bear on the amount of tax that could be collected,” Barker wrote. “Put differently, if the plaintiffs here gave up their § 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, none of the harms they allege could occur.”

Barker noted that there are other avenues to challenge this issue, like by suing after the taxes are collected or disputing the loss of a tax-exempt status caused by a violation of the Johnson Amendment. But this was not the proper venue, no matter how much both sides wanted it to be, he wrote.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy group that attempted to intervene in the case, lauded Tuesday’s ruling.

“We’re glad that the Johnson Amendment will remain a strong bulwark to stop religious extremists from exploiting houses of worship,” said Rachel Laser, the group’s president. “The proposed settlement agreement to exempt only houses of worship and not secular nonprofits would have been unfair and a violation of church-state separation.”

Even before the court could approve the judgment, some conservative Christian pastors began touting the victory and preparing to amp up their political rhetoric. Others, like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said they would continue steering clear of candidate endorsements from the pulpit, no matter the outcome.

Enforcement of the Johnson Amendment has long been lax, in Democratic and Republican administrations alike. The Texas Tribune and ProPublica identified at least 20 examples over a two-year period of churches violating the statute, more than the IRS had investigated in the past decade.

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This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.