2016 Victories: Battling the Corrupt IRS

This is the latest installment in a year-end series looking back at a few of the many victories by the ACLJ in 2016.

President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has engaged in unconstitutional targeting against grassroots conservative and Tea Party groups since at least 2011. The IRS scoured tax applications for words like “Tea Party” and even “patriot” and then made intrusive inquiries, demanding answers “upon penalty of perjury.”

It was abuse like no other. And we fought back.

In one case, after filing a federal lawsuit and litigating for over a year, we successfully compelled the IRS to fully comply with its legal obligations to provide Citizens for a Strong New Hampshire with the relief it had been seeking.

In another major case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed with our position that the IRS’s targeting of conservatives had not ended and that our clients – numerous conservative, Tea Party, and pro-life groups – deserved to have their day in court.

This meant that our case against the IRS could move forward.  

And in October, the culmination of a three-year legal effort finally paid off. The IRS was ordered to issue outstanding determinations and answers for politically targeting citizens and grassroots conservative groups.

The court has finally agreed to entertain our demand that the IRS disclose the details of its blatantly lawless and unconstitutional targeting efforts. It is one of our biggest victories to date. But we still represent 38 groups in federal court, and we won’t stop working to hold the IRS and Obama Administration officials accountable. This fight continues as the IRS seeks to further compound the injuries it has inflicted by denying tax-exempt status to some of these organizations.  We won’t back down as this fight continues.

Be a part of our ongoing fight.

To help the ACLJ continue to have the resources we need to make these victories possible and continue these fights, please consider making a Tax-Deductible donation to the ACLJ through our year-end Matching Challenge. Your gift will be doubled dollar-for-dollar through the end of the year.

You can read more in the ACLJ’s 2016 Victories series here.

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