Freedom Path Revisited: Crashing on the Shoals of Standing
Freedom Path’s journey toward Section 501(c)(4) tax-exempt recognition met another roadblock last month. The federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Freedom Path’s challenge to the IRS’s constitutionally dubious “facts and circumstances test” for determining whether educational issue advocacy on a variety of public policy issues crosses the line into excessive political campaign advocacy. Freedom Path has sought to invalidate the IRS’s Revenue Ruling 2004-06 regarding politically-tinged speech on grounds of vagueness, subjective evaluation of an organization’s communications, impermissible free speech deterrence, and illegal viewpoint discrimination by the IRS. While such arguments seem compelling, the Fifth Circuit instead focused on the preliminary technical “standing” question.