Senior House Democrat Sues I.R.S. Over Tax Exemptions

By JONATHAN WEISMAN, NYT

Representative Chris Van Hollen filed suit in Federal District Court on Wednesday to force the Internal Revenue Service to block tax-exempt “social welfare” organizations from engaging in any overt political activity.

The suit, joined by the campaign watchdog groups Democracy 21, Public Citizen and the Campaign Legal Center, signaled that forces for increased campaign finance regulation may be regaining their footing after the controversy over the I.R.S.’s targeting of political groups had put them on the defensive for months.

But the battleground appears to be shifting from Congress to the courts.

For decades, the I.R.S. has struggled with defining the meaning of “social welfare” when determining whether a group should be eligible for tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status. The government has generally said a group’s “primary” purpose should be social welfare, allowing a significant amount of its work — roughly 49 percent — to be partisan politics. And those groups do not have to publicly disclose their donors.

(More here.)