In Theory: Should the Johnson Amendment be repealed?

The new Republican Platform calls for the repeal of the “Johnson Amendment,” a tax law passed in 1954 that prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from political organizing, TIME reports.

The law was pushed by then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson and other members of Congress to cut off support for their political opponents’ campaigns, George Washington University law professor Robert Tuttle told TIME.

Violating the law may jeopardize an organization’s tax-exempt status.

Some religious liberty groups have called for its repeal, saying that it is unconstitutional and amounts to censoring church officials.

“It intimidates the leaders of the organizations from exercising free speech,” said Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr., a backer of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who supporters say has made the repeal of the Johnson Amendment a priority of his campaign.

“The law is a farce, it is not enforced, and it is time for it to go,” Falwell told TIME.

Q. Is the Johnson Amendment a necessary piece of legislation? Do you think it serves to censor church officials?

I would like to turn this question around to examine the issue of nonprofit tax exemption from the donor side, where my experience lies. Does Mr. Falwell wish to see the federal taxes he pays used to subsidize my support for the Sierra Club or the American Civil Liberties Union? Probably not, is my guess, just as I would object to indirectly supporting the partisan political activities of his groups, via his tax write-offs.

Supporters of the ACLU and the Sierra Club get no tax write-offs for their donations, which fund direct lobbying and other partisan political work. However both have established separate foundations to conduct legitimate charitable and educational efforts, and those are tax-exempt. My gifts to the Sierra Club Foundation to provide wilderness outings for inner-city youth are deductible to the extent allowable by tax laws, to cite one example.

Falwell and other religious liberty complainers could easily do that within their groups. They don’t because they want to have their cake and eat it too, to remain completely tax-exempt while lobbying and supporting candidates for election.

So I am unpersuaded that we need to repeal the Johnson Amendment. Falwell already has the liberty of supporting the Donald as a private citizen, on his own dime.

Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose