IRS pays $50K to anti-gay marriage group

Last edited Wed Jun 25, 2014, 12:02 PM - Edit history (3)

Hat tip for the news, JMG: NOM's John Eastman: The IRS Will Pay Us $50K For "Leaking" Our Donor List

IRS pays $50K to anti-gay marriage group

By MACKENZIE WEINGER | 6/24/14 8:28 PM EDT

The IRS will pay the National Organization for Marriage $50,000 to settle a lawsuit over claims the agency improperly disclosed confidential tax information, according to a consent judgment released this week.
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The lawsuit stemmed from information an IRS worker sent to an individual who identified himself as a member of the media who requested it in the midst of the 2012 presidential campaign, which he then sent to the pro-gay rights group Human Rights Campaign. The Huffington Post then ran a story noting a political action committee linked to Mitt Romney had been a donor to NOM.

A federal district court judge, however, recently ruled that there was not enough evidence to demonstrate the disclosure was willful and that the record showed it was released “inadvertently as part of a single employee’s mistake.”
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Shortly after the judge’s June 3 opinion, the IRS and NOM struck a deal to resolve NOM’s claims for actual damages and costs that resulted from the disclosure.

When responding to a request for a copy of the organization’s amended 2008 Form 990, the IRS said an employee forgot to redact the names and addresses of NOM’s donors before sending it out to an individual, who then forwarded a copy of NOM’s amended 2008 Form 990, Schedule B to the Human Rights Campaign, which published it. ... The HRC then forwarded it to a Huffington Post journalist, who ran an article with the information that focused on the fact that an Alabama state political action committee connected to Romney had in 2008 made a $10,000 donation to NOM.
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Author: Mackenzie Weinger (mweinger@politico.com | @mweinger)

By Mark Joseph Stern

This week, a Reagan-appointed federal judge handed the National Organization for Marriage its first major rejection of the month, kicking the anti-gay-marriage group’s IRS lawsuit out of court. NOM, a longtime opponent of disclosure laws, had claimed that the IRS intentionally leaked a contributor list to the pro-gay Human Rights Campaign, using the accusation as a fundraising tool. On Tuesday, however, U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris slammed NOM’s claim, noting the group’s utter lack of evidence and criticizing its case as “unconvincing” and “unpersuasive.”