ARTICLES

Rock the Boat

Lawyers Reassure Churches

By Robert Kumpel

Life on the Ballot, a consortium of California volunteer groups, will be collecting signatures for an abortion parental-notification bill for the November, 2004 election. If they get enough signatures, it may be because the rules of the game have changed: This time, there is solid agreement that the law allows signature-gathering on church property. Three major legal advocacy organizations -- the Becket Fund, the Thomas More Law Center, and the Life Legal Defense Foundation -- buttress this argument.

Katie Short, legal director of the Life Legal Defense Foundation, says that her group and others hope to allay fears that churches might have about losing tax-exempt status. "I checked the regulations in the IRS code as far as what is permitted and it was clear to me that signature gathering is another form of lobbying activity. Lobbying activity is permitted, and signature gathering is a form of lobbying as long as it is an insubstantial part of the [church] organization's activities. In fact, they specifically used that as a typical example of a lobbying activity."

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, whose board of advisors includes Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School, Cardinal George of Chicago, Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, has written a letter in mid-April saying that the "law is crystal clear that [gathering signatures for ballot initiatives on Church property] would not in any way jeopardize [churches' tax-exempt status]."

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, says that in previous tax court rulings the limitations have been set as low as five percent of church activity and as high as ten percent. "The fear many pastors have of losing their tax-exempt status is not borne out by the law itself. Organizations that have 501(c)(3) status are allowed to participate in legislative activity and lobby for legislative activity and that includes initiative referendums as long as their expenditures are not a substantial part of the activities of the church. When you determine whether it's a substantial part of the activities of the church, you take into account all of the activities of the church, the expenditures and everything else that they do, so you have a total picture of what the church is doing. Once you do that ... the general consensus is that if your activities are five percent or less, you are not going to be in any danger of losing tax-exempt status."

"The other important aspect is if the church itself is not involved, if members of the church are involved, then it's not an activity of the church. Those are individuals, and it is not going to affect the expenditures of the church. There was an IRS ruling on that which involved colleges that had non-profit status during the Vietnam War. College students and college newspapers became involved in advocating changes in policy and political activities, and the IRS said that the activities were not attributable to the institution itself.

"Here in Michigan we had an issue of physician-assisted suicide on the state ballot in 1998. The churches were deeply involved in opposing the legalization of physician-assisted suicide, to the point where for almost three months up to the election, pastors were mentioning it in their homily -- the position of the churches against physician-assisted suicide -- and people were handing out yard-signs from churches. I'm Catholic, but Lutherans and other Protestant churches were doing the same thing. Their tax-exempt status was never in jeopardy at all...."

In Thompson's view, there are grave constitutional issues when the government attempts to limit the activities of religion. "We have the First Amendment right to religious freedom, and I would assume that most Christian churches and certainly the Catholic Church have the commission to go out and be the salt of the earth, to be leaven for society, to advocate changes based on Christian principles.

"I found a great quote from Archbishop Chaput's book Living the Catholic Faith: Rediscovering the Basics. He says, 'God doesn't need anonymous Christians, Christians who blend in, Christians who don't make waves. We're here to rock the boat.'

"It is very important that any initiative that is consistent with the doctrine of the Church have the assistance of the Church, and we believe that that assistance can be in the area of allowing people to circulate petitions on church property without any danger of having their tax-exempt status removed."

To help with the signature gathering for this parental notification initiative, call 213-896-9554 or email emmatrujillo@attbi.com.

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