Is It Constitutional To Make Churches Disclose Their Finances?

Bostonist had always supposed, without giving the matter much thought, that religious organizations were exempt from taxes because taxing them at all would be unconstitutional government meddling in religious affairs. It turns out we were wrong. Religious organizations are tax-exempt because they are non-profits (and it would be unconstitutional to tax religious non-profits while letting the secular ones slide). Numerous federal cases tell us that when it comes to tax-exempt status for religions, the legislature giveth, and the legislature can take away if it feeleth like it and doeth so equally to all other similarly situated organizations, religious and secular. (This makes sense, too - it would be weird if, say, nuns didn't have to get driver's licenses.) In fact, the IRS already has complicated financial disclosure requirements for religious organizations that want a tax exemption.

Of course, a law aimed at just one religion is definitely unconstitutional. Hence, every mosque, synagogue, and storefront charismatic church in the Commonwealth would be required under this new law to disclose its land holdings. Does it matter that the folks sponsoring the bill admit that their sights are set on the archdiocese? Probably not, so long as the law is enforced against all religions equally and there's some legitimate government purpose at play. The actual purpose that the bill's sponsors seem to have in mind is to make the Catholic church show just how broke it really is if it's going to go shutting down parishes. That's probably not legitimate, since it mostly satisfies nothing more than parishioners' anger. However, the law would also serve the purpose of verifying that religious organizations are making good, charitable use of the charitable donations they receive - the same rationale that justifies federal disclosure rules - so it would most likely be constitutional. Be that as it may, the archdiocese (along with other denominations) is lobbying hard against the bill, and we would not be surprised to see litigation on the matter if the bill is enacted into law. Hopefully by that time, Bostonist will have become a judge, the case will come before us, and we will have to recuse ourselves because of this post, thus lightening our workload.

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