Court says IRS must prove it stopped tea party targeting

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Washington Times:

A federal appeals court slapped the IRS with yet another rebuke Friday, ruling that it did, in fact, discriminate against tea party groups and insisting the tax agency prove that it’s permanently stopped the unconstitutional targeting of groups because of their political leanings.

 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said tea party groups can’t sue individual IRS employees such as former senior executive Lois G. Lerner, but said the tax agency itself has not sufficiently proved that it has banned any future targeting. The three-judge panel sent the case back to a lower court for a more thorough ruling.

 

The IRS had insisted it “voluntarily” ceased the targeting, so the case was moot.

 

But Judge David B. Sentelle, writing for the appeals court, said that was clearly not the case because some organizations were still awaiting approval years after they applied. And he flatly rejected the IRS’s explanation that those groups couldn’t be processed because they were suing the IRS, calling that a classic catch-22.

 

“The IRS is telling the applicants in these cases that ‘we have been violating your rights and not properly processing your applications. You are entitled to have your applications processed. But if you ask for that processing by way of a lawsuit, then you can’t have it,’” Judge Sentelle wrote. “We would advise the IRS: if you haven’t ceased to violate the rights of the taxpayers, then there is no cessation. You have not carried your burden, be it heavy or light.”

________

 

The bureaucracy's truth burden...

 

[Valin]

Catch-22, IRS style
Scott Johnson
August 8 2016

This past Friday the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals partly reinstated the lawsuits brought by two groups — True the Vote and Linchpins of Liberty — that had sued the IRS over its targeting of conservative or Tea Party-type organizations seeking 501(1)©(3) status. The court has resurrected the groups’ claims for relief enjoining the IRS against continued discriminatory treatment. The D.C. Circuit opinion is posted here and is worth reading. Walter Olson comments on it here. Our friend Cleta Mitchell comments briefly at the bottom of this post.

 

Together with the Department of Justice, the IRS is prominent among the federal agencies most degraded by the Obama administration. When the Department of Justice represents the IRS, as it does in these cases, one occasionally finds the sort of (warning: microaggression) black humor perfected in absurdist writers of the 1960’s.

 

The court noticed. It even cited a classic novel of the genre to make the point. The IRS supported dismissal of the claims for equitable relief in the True the Vote/Linchpin of Liberty cases on the ground that it had (almost) ceased the conduct in issue. Writing for the panel (at pages 17-18), Judge Sentelle was not amused (page citation omitted):

 

(Snip)