In common with other charities, religious organizations enjoy significant benefits under federal tax law, including exemption from income tax and the ability of donors to deduct their contributions for income, gift, and estate tax purposes. But these benefits are not costless. Also in common with other charities, religious organizations are prohibited from providing private inurement and private benefit, engaging in a significant amount of lobbying, intervening in political campaigns, promoting illegality, or acting contrary to fundamental public policy. The IRS takes the position that these limitations apply with equal force to all tax-exempt charities, including religious organizations. Some \= religious organizations have challenged the application of the lobbying, political campaign intervention, illegality, and fundamental public policy limitations on religious liberty grounds, invoking the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment and, more recently, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). To date, however, federal courts have rejected these challenges, concluding that they are permissible conditions on the tax benefits enjoyed by religious organizations. This essay reconsiders this conclusion and the arguments in support of it. One such argument is that tax law is somehow different from other legal contexts for purposes of applying the unconstitutional conditions doctrine to religious organization. The consistent refusal of the courts to allow free-exercise-of-religion-based exemptions from generally applicable federal tax laws suggests this may be the case. This difference could be viewed as a strand of the increasingly disfavored view sometimes referred to as “tax exceptionalism.” But I argue that this difference instead fits within the more traditional compelling governmental interest and least restrictive means analysis codified in RFRA and that arguably applied in the Free Exercise of Religion Clause context before the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith. More specifically, tax law is different because of its complex rules applicable to all individuals and entities relating to expenditures for lobbying, political campaign intervention, and illegal activity. The complexity of these rules, and the risk that granting exemptions from them for any reason would undermine their uniform and consistent application, support the conclusion that the government has a compelling interest in not allowing exemptions, and that the existing limitations imposed on tax-exempt charities, including religious organizations, are the least restrictive means to do so. As a result, constitutional and RFRA free exercise of religion rights do not require exemptions for religious organizations from these existing limitations even when such organizations are motivated by their religious beliefs to engage in the limited activities. Furthermore, while this argument does not apply to the contrary to fundamental public policy limitation, the Supreme Court has correctly concluded that in the instances where there is a fundamental public policy, ensuring that tax-supported charities do not undermine that policy is also a compelling governmental interest and prohibiting them from doing so is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.

In a democracy characterized by the separation of church and state, what role does the federal government play in regulating the activities and the financial transactions of churches and other religious nonprofit organizations? What are the current federal requirements regarding tax exemption for churches, tax deductibility of donations to churches, and political activity by churches, and are these requirements justified? Rather than interfering with the free exercise of religion, does the federal government actually come closer to violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment by providing inappropriate tax benefits to churches and clergy? This paper discusses tax laws and federal court decisions relating to these and other issues.

Many religious freedom laws provide exemptions to persons who refuse to comply with certain laws on religious grounds. But these exemptions are increasingly used (by claimants and others) to advance political goals. For example, religious freedom lawsuits helped to undermine the Affordable Care Act's guarantee of coverage for contraceptives. And the recent Masterpiece Cakeshop case was part of a broader effort to protest the right to same-sex marriage. This paper argues that the state should not grant religious exemptions when they are used to advance political goals. A religious exemption creates a legal inequality between citizens that can only be justified if the protection is not used politically. As such, the state should ensure that laws providing religious exemptions are written, interpreted, and enforced so as to prevent their political misuse.

Balancing the autonomy of religious organizations against regulatory laws remains both a difficult and hotly contested issue. It is helpful to survey labor, property, tax, and education laws to illustrate the tensions between religion and government in American law. Labor law cases show the autonomy of religious organizations concerning governmental regulations through the National Labor Relations Act and Title VII. In regard to church property, the government has an interest in regulating how religious organizations buy and sell land, run day care centers and food kitchens, raise and borrow money, commit torts, and enter into contracts. Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code provides tax-exempt status for churches, integrated auxiliaries of churches, and charitable organizations. The IRS has promulgated numerous factors to distinguish among these three organizations. Although parents have the right to send their children to religious schools, the assistance they can obtain from the state to effectuate that choice is limited. The Supreme Court has decided a number of cases involving both the extent of religious symbolism and accommodation in public schools and the extent of aid to religious schools. These cases and laws show that although American law zealously guards the autonomy of religious organizations, it does not grant those organizations the right to be a law unto themselves.

Photo 3701647 © Jeremy Swinborne | Dreamstime.com INTRODUCTION Among the many unclear issues as interpretations of Employment Division v. Smith arise in the context of vaccination mandates is a simple question: Does any exception to a law at all (whether for a group or an individual) render a law not “generally applicable and religion-neutral” in the eyes of the current Supreme Court? I. Background Prior to Employment Division v. Smith,[i] Sherbert v. Verner[ii] set forth the free exercise test which called for strict scrutiny requiring a compelling state interest and the use of the least restrictive means to achieve the state interest when a law poses a substantial burden to the exercise of religion. Sherbert had a broad holding that prior to Smith applied to laws whether neutral on their face or not, and whether the asserted discrimination was intentional or not. One issue with Sherbert was that judges were not especially adept at judging the sincerity of beliefs and the importanc...

This paper examines how religious exemptions harm individuals both physically and spiritually with particular emphasis on Christian Science.

Many philosophers and jurists believe that individuals should sometimes be granted religiously-grounded exemptions from laws or rules. To determine whether an exemption is merited in a particular case, the religious claim must be weighed against the countervailing values that favour the uniform application of the law or rule. This paper develops and applies a framework for assessing the weight of religious claims to exemption, across two dimensions. First, the importance of the burdened religious practice, which is determined by its level of obligatoriness and centrality, according to the beliefs of the individual claimant. Second, the extent of the burden on the practice, which depends on the cost the individual bears if she both undertakes the religious practice and obeys the law or rule, where costs are assessed using an impartial account of individual interests. Exemptions should be granted when claims are weighty on either of these dimensions and the countervailing value is relatively weak. The final section of the paper responds to an important objection to this approach, which concerns administrability.