When should nonprofits use Robert’s Rules? And to what extent? Robert’s Rules can provide a deliberative body and its leaders with helpful parameters for properly addressing matters in an informed, effective, and beneficial manner.
Can controversial groups expect government protection from mandatory disclosures of their participants? Not as the Americans for Prosperity Foundation has painfully learned in California. APF suffered yet another court setback in the federal appellate Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent denial of an en banc (full court) rehearing. APF has fought the California Attorney General’s mandatory donor disclosures in annual filings, citing First Amendment freedom of speech, association rights, and related concerns for donors’ privacy and protection from harassment.
On March 15, 2019, the Seventh Circuit issued its Gaylor v. Mnuchin ruling, upholding the clergy housing allowance’s constitutionality. This decision astutely recognizes that the fundamental questions in this case fall in a jurisprudentially gray area, or within the “play in the joints” between the First Amendment’s Free Exercise and Establishment clauses. Between these two foundational pillars of our liberal democracy, the Court’s constitutional interpretation rightly respects the independence of institutions for a free society, particularly as applied to the clergy housing allowance. Such deference further implicates the interplay between tax subsidy theory and religion.