In a decision largely ignored by many major media sources, A federal agency violated the Constitution, was unlawfully used for partisan purposes, and refused to comply with a court order to cease and desist in its illegal actions. That’s the essence of a verdict by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday, in a case involving the targeting of groups that merely disagreed with the Obama Administration’s political perspectives.
Thirty-eight non-profit organizations from twenty-two states were subjected to violations of their First Amendment rights.
According to the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which represented the aggrieved organizations, a lower court’s dismissal of their claims was made in error, on the unfounded position that the IRS had since ceased all allegedly illegal activity. The Court of Appeals criticized the IRS’s untruthful arguments that it had voluntarily ceased all illegal activity, stating unequivocally in the opinion that “voluntary cessation [by the IRS of the alleged illegal activity] has never occurred.”
In the decision, The Court of Appeals clearly voiced its disdain for the IRS’s cynical and dishonest position, according to ACLJ:
“The IRS proudly boasts that ‘no more than ‘two’ applications for exemption remain pending with the IRS.’ Further, they claim, ‘the vast majority of the plaintiffs lack a personal stake in the outcome of the lawsuit . . . .’ We would advise the IRS that a heavy burden of establishing mootness is not carried by proving that the case is nearly moot, or is moot as to a ‘vast majority’ of the parties. Their heavy burden requires that they establish cessation, not near cessation.
“Specifically addressing the two organizations who still await a determination from the IRS after more than five years after submitting their applications, the court stated:
“The IRS offers a rather puzzling explanation for why the continued failure to afford proper processing to at least some of the victim applicants should not prevent a finding of cessation. That explanation is that the organizations whose applications were still pending ‘were involved in ‘litigation’ with the Justice Department . . . .’ . . . It is not at all clear why the IRS proposes that not ceasing becomes cessation if the victim of the conduct is litigating against it. The IRS position is reminiscent of Catch-22 from the novel of the same name. Under that ‘catch,’ World War II airmen were not required to fly if they were mentally ill. However, anyone who applied to stop flying was evidencing rationality and therefore was not mentally ill. See Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1971). ‘You are entitled to an exemption from flying,’ the government said, ‘but you can’t get it as long as you are asking for it.’
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“The court also noted that the IRS failed miserably to meet its burden to demonstrate that it had voluntarily ceased the allegedly discriminatory conduct and to demonstrate that ‘(1) there is no reasonable expectation that the conduct will recur [or] (2) interim relief or events have completely and irrevocably eradicated the effects of the alleged violation.’ The court further noted:
“ [I]t is absurd to suggest that the effect of the IRS’s unlawful conduct…has been eradicated…”
The Court noted: “Instead of processing [applications for nonprofit status for the affected organizations] in the normal course of IRS business, as would have been the case with other taxpayers, the IRS selected out these applicants for more rigorous review on the basis of their names, which were in each 4 instance indicative of a conservative or anti-Administration orientation.admitted by the Department of Treasury in the 2013 report of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA)…To place in context our discussion of TIGTA’s findings, we recall that under the First Amendment, the government “has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.”
Information obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request reveals that officials “orchestrated a complex scheme to dump conservative and Tea Party non-profit applicants into a bureaucratic ‘black hole.’ Another 294 pages of documents … also recently released by Judicial Watch further establish that ‘top IRS officials in Washington, including Lois Lerner and Holly Paz, knew that the agency was specifically targeting ‘Tea Party’ and other conservative organizations two full years before disclosing it to Congress and the public…
“This upcoming December will mark the 7th year anniversary since [the orgnaizations involved] mailed in their application requesting tax-exempt status and the IRS cashed their check…The IRS constructed a special group to send all ‘applications associated with the Tea Party’ to …’Group 7822’; designed as a ‘special team apparently developed specifically to snare targeted organizations’ tax exemption requests to ensure that they would ‘not be approved before the November 2012 presidential election.’ The IRS was able to protect the administration of this group by hiding its operations and activity behind the hundreds of layers of the bureaucracy alive and well within the IRS and the cooperation of other government agencies.”
The use of the IRS to influence the 2012 presidential campaign is not just history. The abuse of federal agencies continues, as can be seen in the failure of the Department of Justice to review recent voting irregularities.