UCLA School of Law

This piece examines the proposed order and joint motion for entry of consent judgment in National Religious Broadcasters v. Commissioner addressing the relationship between the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits campaign intervention for any entity exempt under section 501(c)(3), and houses of worship. In it, Aprill explains that, if the judge adopts the proposed consent order, it would enjoin enforcement of the Johnson Amendment only against those two churches. The proposed order, however, has been widely misunderstood as the IRS giving permission for houses of worship generally to ignore the Johnson Amendment in a variety of settings. That misunderstanding calls for a critical evaluation of reasoning in the proposed order. The piece questions the proposed order on several grounds — its interpretation of statutory language, the analogy to a family discussion, its selective use of Supreme Court precedent, and the practical effect of the rule as articulated. Should the IRS decide to issue a new rule of general applicability, it would need to confront all of those issues.