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Is ACLJ violating its nonprofit status?
cross-posted at dKosYesterday, the Tennessean ran an article (republished in USA Today) showing that the American Center for Law and Justice has paid out a whopping $33 million over the last decade to chief counsel Jay Sekulow, his family or entities related to them. There's a name for this sort of activity--inurement. But if that isn't enough reason for the IRS to peer into the ACLJ's guts, this is--seems that it's been involved in cases that it may not be legally supposed to take part. ACLJ had applied as a charity focused on First Amendment issues. “When any case in which you are involved ceases to involve First Amendment issues, your participation therein will end,” the IRS told ACLJ in a letter dated May 1994. But ACLJ’s recent lawsuits, including ones against health-care reform legislation and Planned Parenthood in Los Angeles, don’t contain arguments based on the First Amendment. Case in point--the ACLJ Website currently includes a link to its effort to get the health-care bill thrown out. And Sekulow's latest blog post on it includes a link to the brief for its suit in a D.C. appeals court hoping to strike the bill down. The brief makes no First Amendment arguments. Even more damningly, the head of the ACLJ's Nashville-area office tacitly admits the Planned Parenthood case is a whistleblower case and not a First Amendment one. |
The ACLJ's tax lawyer, however, contends there are First Amendment issues at play. But John Hoover, a Washington, D.C.-based tax attorney with Dow Lohnes who advises ACLJ, said there are First Amendment issues in both cases. “Health care reform and Planned Parenthood’s activities involve complex constitutional issues relating to funding abortions,” he wrote. “These cases implicate religious liberty and human rights issues, which involve protections guaranteed under the First Amendment.” Hoover apparently didn't read the ACLJ's brief on the health care case, nor did he talk to the ACLJ's staff chief in Nashville. Couple this with damning evidence of inurement, and hopefully the IRS will take a peek. |
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