Churches can endorse political candidates to congregations, IRS says

By Nate Raymond

July 8 (Reuters) - Churches and other houses of worship can endorse political candidates to their congregations without risking losing their status as tax-exempt nonprofits, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service said.

In a court filing on Monday to resolve a lawsuit by two Texas churches and the National Religious Broadcasters, the IRS said traditional religious communications are exempt from a decades-old provision in the U.S. tax code that bars nonprofits, religious and secular, from endorsing political candidates.

The NRB, an association of Christian broadcasters, in the lawsuit filed in August ahead of the 2024 presidential election, challenged a 1954 tax code provision called the Johnson Amendment named for then-Senator Lyndon Johnson, who went on to become president.

The lawsuit argued that the law infringed the churches' rights to freedom of speech and free exercise of religion under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment and treated them differently than other organizations in violation of their Fifth Amendment equal protection and due process rights.

The U.S. Department of Justice under Democratic President Joe Biden had defended the law's constitutionality in court, saying Congress was entitled to refuse to subsidize political activity through tax benefits.

Republican President Donald Trump has criticized the law and called for the Johnson Amendment to be repealed. During his first term in office in 2017, Trump signed an executive order aimed at easing the ban on political activity by churches.

The IRS said in its filing that interpreting the Johnson Amendment to include internal communications between a house of worship and its congregation would create "serious tension" with the First Amendment.

"For these reasons, the Johnson Amendment does not reach speech by a house of worship to its congregation, in connection with religious services through its customary channels of communication on matters of faith, concerning electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith," the IRS said.

The agency said a church endorsing a candidate to its congregants would be equivalent to a "family discussion concerning candidates," not campaigning.

The IRS and NRB did not respond to requests for comment.