Friday, September 12, 2008

Congressional Research Service Issues Report Analyzing Church Electioneering Ban Legislation

The Congressional Research Service issued a report ($$) that analyzes legislative efforts to lift the ban on church electioneering. The report is titled Churches and Campaign Activity: Analysis of the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act and Similar Legislation. It highlights legislation that has been introduced in the past few years in an attempt to allow religious organizations to engage in political activities without jeopardizing their tax exempt status.

Legislation to lift the church electioneering ban has been introduced in Congress each of the last four years. In the legislation, the word "church" is used to refer to all religious organizations.

The current bill, H.R. 2275, was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee on May 10. According to BNA, ($$) [u]nder the bill, churches and other Section 501(c)(3) organizations would be allowed to engage in all types of campaign activity without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status." The only limitation would be "that it could not be the organization's primary activity."

The previous bills included H.R. 235, (109th Congress) the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act, which said that "churches would not have been treated as participating in campaign activity" because of the content or presentation of any sermon or other "presentation made during religious services or gatherings."

H.R. 235 (108th Congress) which was an earlier version of the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act.

A provision in H.R. 4520 (108th Congress) would have allowed religious leaders to make political statements without their churches being regarded as having participated in campaign activity. Also, churches that unintentionally engaged in electioneering would not lose their tax-exempt status unless it happened more than three times in one year. Finally, unintentional violations would have been subject to a new excise tax.

H.R. 2357 and S. 2886 (107th Congress), the Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act, would have allowed "churches to engage in campaign activity so long as it was 'no substantial part' of a church's activities."

Under H.R. 2931 (107th Congress), the Bright-Line Act of 2001, a church would have "violated the campaign prohibition if it normally made expenditures for campaign activity in excess of 5% of its gross revenues. Lobbying expenditures could not have normally exceeded 20% of its gross revenues, and the church could not have normally spent more than 20% of its gross revenues on campaign and lobbying activities combined."