Tea Party Wins a Round vs IRS

Federal judge demands IRS's list of all 298 conservative nonprofits it targeted

A federal judge has ordered the Internal Revenue Service to hand over a list of the 298 tea party organizations that it targeted with broad and often intrusive questions when they applied for nonprofit tax-exempt status. The decision from U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott means right-wing groups are a step closer to being allowed to pursue a class-action lawsuit against the IRS.

The agency has admitted playing political favorites with the tax code beginning in 2010, when it began applying extra scrutiny to groups with red-flag words like 'patriots' or 'tea party' in their names. While those organizations' applications were held up for years, liberal groups sailed through the process.

Dlott agreed this week that the tea party groups suing the government can pursue their claims that the IRS violated their First and Fifth Amendment rights, along with a section of federal law – Section 6103 of Title 26 – that prohibits the government from releasing private information contained in tax returns.

When the Treasury Department's Office of Inspector General investigated the IRS's actions, it demanded – and received – a list of 298 groups whose tax-exemption applications had been held up.
It's this list that the tea party groups want.

Their lawsuit aims first to identify a list of 'all dissenting groups targeted for additional scrutiny by the IRS from January 20, 2009, through July 15, 2013.'

Dlott could then choose to certify that list as a 'class' of plaintiffs.

Needless to say, the IRS has been reluctant to show its full hand, using the alleged right of confidentiality of the groups involved as the excuse, which they had already violated on multiple occasions for partisan political reasons.

The IRS's lawyers claimed that they couldn't provide the court with the names of all the groups, saying they would have to turn over the very documents that Section 6103 requires them to keep confidential.

The conservative plaintiffs said they would be happy to have only the spreadsheet that the inspector general got from the IRS. Dlott agreed and ordered the agency to hand it over.

'The Court concludes that the return information sought is directly related to the issue of class certification in this federal court proceeding,' her ruling reads.

Abuses like this will only end when the agencies that commit them are sanctioned on a level that begins to effect the workers that put them into place. Cutting the IRS's budget is a blunt and ineffective club, which affects the worker bees in the hive that gather the nectar more than the queen bee who controls the hive and the drones which serve her. Criminal prosecutions, prison and heavy fines for the people who directed and concealed the operations are required.