Bishops’ Group Refuses Court Order to Turn Over Documents

The National Conference of Catholic Bishops told a federal judge Friday it will not release documents relating to its anti-abortion campaign despite a possible contempt of court charge, church sources said.

The decision, being sent to the church’s more than 300 bishops, is part of a complex legal maneuver dealing with a suit by an abortion rights group seeking revocation of the church’s tax-exempt status.

The church wants to move the suit from the District Court to a federal appeals court.

“We’re disappointed they made this decision,” said Marshall Beil, a lawyer for Abortion Rights Mobilization, the plaintiff in the suit. “We have been trying for three years to get the documents from the Catholic Church in this case. They have steadfastly stalled and refused.

“We’re much more interested in moving the case forward than in holding the church in contempt,” he said.

Friday Deadline

The church’s decision to withhold the documents was made known Friday to U.S. District Judge Robert Carter in New York. He had given the bishops’ conference and its social action arm, the U.S. Catholic Conference, until Friday to comply with subpoenas ordering them to turn over ARM-requested documents on anti-abortion activities.

The case began in late 1980 when ARM filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service and the conferences, charging that the church’s attempts to overturn the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing most abortions violated political action regulations for tax-exempt organizations. ARM sought revocation of the church’s exempt status.

Defendants Dismissed

Although the church conferences were original defendants in the suit, Carter dismissed them as defendants in 1982. Only the Treasury Department, parent agency of the IRS, remains as a defendant.

Church sources said the conferences are willing to risk a contempt citation so they could raise two issues at a higher court level--the question of whether the District Court erred in saying ARM has standing to sue and whether the wide-ranging discovery requests in the subpoenas violate the First Amendment guarantee of the separation of church and state.