Speaker 1: President Donald Trump took executive action yesterday to give churches
Speaker 1: and religious groups greater leeway to engage in politics without
Speaker 1: risking their tax exempt status. The order directs the Internal
Speaker 1: Revenue Service to use its discretion in the enforcement of
Speaker 1: the law known as the Johnson Amendment, a decades old
Speaker 1: provision of the tax code that bars many tax exempt
Speaker 1: organizations from directly endorsing candidates for office. But what does
Speaker 1: this order really do well? The Americans Civil Liberties Union
Speaker 1: tweeted that we thought we'd have to sue Trump today,
Speaker 1: but it turned out the order signing was an elaborate
Speaker 1: photo op with no discernible policy outcome. Our guest is
Speaker 1: Douglas Lacock. He's a professor at the University of Virginia
Speaker 1: School of Law. Doug, what does this order do As
Speaker 1: far as destroying the Johnson Amendment, which Trump has vowed
Speaker 1: to do, the c U Rights doesn't do anything. Um.
Speaker 1: The issue in the Johnson Amendment is Canada taxa exempt organization.
Speaker 1: It's not just churches. Can a tax exempt organization endorse
Speaker 1: the political candidate? And and the reality is if churches
Speaker 1: endorsed candidates with some frequency in the I R S.
Speaker 1: Job bones about it. It It tells him not to, but
Speaker 1: it never actually tries to enforce the law. I don't
Speaker 1: think it has any confidence that it's constitutional. The sensor sermons, UH,
Speaker 1: if they spend money, they buy a full page ad,
Speaker 1: they can lose their tax exemption. There's one case like that.
Speaker 1: UM nothing in its executive border says that UM churches
Speaker 1: can endorse candidates. It says they should be treated the
Speaker 1: same way as other secular nonprofits, which they uh pretty
Speaker 1: much already are. So there's nothing there's nothing new here.
Speaker 1: So well, so what would it take though to really
Speaker 1: change the Johnson Amendment? And if you're gonna do it,
Speaker 1: would it you know, would it just be focused on
Speaker 1: churches or where you felt isn't? Well, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: do it, you ought to focus on all not for
Speaker 1: profits because if you do it only for churches thing
Speaker 1: you get an argument that it's a preference from religion
Speaker 1: and it's an establishment close violation. UM. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a bill in Congress to repeal it, which would be
Speaker 1: a mistake. UM. In general, political contributions are not tax
Speaker 1: deductible political contributions that churches are. So if churches could
Speaker 1: spend money on politics. That would be a huge, huge loophole. UM.
Speaker 1: But there's also a bill to say, look, apply to
Speaker 1: Johnson Amendment only when the church spends money on politics,
Speaker 1: and don't apply it to things like a sermon that
Speaker 1: are in the ordinary course of the church's activity and
Speaker 1: don't cost any money. Um. That's pretty much what the
Speaker 1: i R S and force and policy has been. And
Speaker 1: and I don't think that bill is gonna pass, but
Speaker 1: but it could and and and that would codify the
Speaker 1: the existing practice. But it takes congressional action to change
Speaker 1: the Johnson Amendment. UM. The most the present could do
Speaker 1: by executive border is UM tell the I R s
Speaker 1: to use enforcement discretion not to enforce it. And they've
Speaker 1: been doing that for years, Doug. What does the order do,
Speaker 1: if anything, As far as the contraception mandate, which is
Speaker 1: the provision of the Obamacare Act that requires health plans
Speaker 1: and insurers to provide contraception to women, Well, it does.
Speaker 1: It does very little there either. It it UM instructs
Speaker 1: the secretaries of the three relevant Cabinet agencies to consider
Speaker 1: issuing amended regulations UH to address conscience based objections. UM.
Speaker 1: So hobby Hobby already exempts employers who don't want to
Speaker 1: pay for contraception. UM. The only thing left is the
Speaker 1: employers who don't want their second insurance companies to pay
Speaker 1: for it either. That's what the Little Sisters of the
Speaker 1: Poor case was about. UM. And maybe the three cabinet
Speaker 1: agencies will do something about that. UM. Maybe the administration
Speaker 1: will settle those cases on terms favorable to the religious employers.
Speaker 1: But this executive order doesn't do anything. And and of
Speaker 1: course the President doesn't need an executive order to ask
Speaker 1: his cabinet officers to consider something. And that's all this
Speaker 1: says they should consider it. So and about the thirty
Speaker 1: seconds we have left in it, you know, some people
Speaker 1: say that, uh, some conservative religious groups were unhappy with
Speaker 1: this order because it didn't do that much. What is
Speaker 1: it they'd like to see President Trump do. Well. They
Speaker 1: would like to see a sweeping declaration to protect conscience
Speaker 1: on all the hot button social issues, particularly discrimination against
Speaker 1: case and transgender for federal contractors and federal employees. UM.
Speaker 1: The wedding vendor case is the Forest and the Bakers.
Speaker 1: Those are all state law cases. The President can't do
Speaker 1: anything about those. But the draft back in February. Uh,
Speaker 1: seemed to say, and nobody working for the federal government
Speaker 1: has to serve anybody has a religious objection to and
Speaker 1: and there's not a hint of that in this executive quarter.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being on Bloomberg Law. That's Douglas Laycockey is
Speaker 1: a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
Speaker 1: Coming up on Bloomberg Law. It's perhaps their most popular song,
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