Government Lawyers Advocate For Atheism As A Religion

[rug]

8/18/2013 @ 11:57AM
Peter J Reilly

The litigation between the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the United States over the parsonage exclusion has taken an odd turn. The Government is trying to convince a couple of atheists who get housing allowances from FFRF that maybe they might qualify as “ministers of the gospel”.

Background

The parsonage exclusion (Code Section 107) allows “ministers of the gospel” to exclude from income both in-kind housing they receive from congregations and cash housing allowances that are spent on housing. Although the benefit is usually a fairly modest boost to the take-home pay of ministers of small congregations, there is no dollar limitation allowing for the folks my blogging buddy Reverend William Thornton calls “religious racketeers” to have six figure housing allowances. As Reverend Thornton wrote:

Someone make the case that Joe Sixpack has to pay taxes on his income and doesn’t get any exclusion for his singlewide complete with a deck and a mangy dog sleeping under it, while Kenneth and Gloria Copeland live in an 18,280 square-foot lakefront parsonage on 25 acres valued at $6.2 million and exclude hundreds of thousands of dollars from income taxes under the housing allowance, or while Phil Driscoll enjoys not owing federal income taxes on $408,638 provided to him by his ministry to buy a second home on a lake near Cleveland, Tenn. (BTW - Driscoll won in Tax Court, but ended up losing on appeal)

FFRF, on the other hand, is upset by any housing allowance for clergy viewing it as an unconstitutional subsidy to religion. That is why they are suing.

The Problem of Standing

It is actually pretty hard to litigate about somebody else’s tax break. The explanation is pretty lawyerly. The general idea is that if you think the laws are screwed up in general, you should be calling your congressman. To have access to the courts you should be arguing that the laws are screwing you specifically. FFRF came up with a clever way around this problem. They started paying two of their officers housing allowances. They could then argue that they were being treated unfairly, because they were not entitled to exclude their housing allowances. The Government, in a summary judgment motion, argued that they did not have standing, because they did not file a claim with the IRS, but the Court thought that was pretty silly, since the FFRF officers were clearly not ministers. That was nearly a year ago.

Things Get Weird

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2013/08/18/government-lawyers-advocate-for-atheism-as-a-religion/

[ZombieHorde]

1. Hehe. nt

[Promethean]

2. Sometimes trolling the system

is the best way to bring attention to its faults.

[cbayer]

4. I'm not sure what you meant by that. Could you elaborate?

[Promethean]

5. Trolling

Is an internet term referring to deliberately antagonizing to get a response. A good example of trolling for instance would be to perform an action in a way that treads close to some established rule then making a big deal about that rule and pointing to yourself as an example. Kind of like what FFRF did this the above article.

[cbayer]

6. I'm not sure that I agree that they are trolling.

I think the point they are trying to make is worthy and that the topic merits a closer look and possible reconsideration.

The bind they find themselves in order to establish some standing is the interesting part, IMO.

Is it trolling or just their only legal recourse to have the parsonage exemption reversed?

At any rate, it kind of backfired in this case, and the question of whether atheism should be considered a religion for legal purposes a very interesting one.

[struggle4progress]

7. From the article: "... The notion of atheists qualifying is actually not that strange.

The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregation, which is a non-creedal denomination, recognizes atheism ..."

[cbayer]

8. Exactly. But has there been a fully atheist organization that has been declared a

religion for legal purposes?

[struggle4progress]

9. I suppose you can research that if you like, but it seems to me the wrong question. I think

the proper questions involve the reason behind the housing allowance and the issues of who can apply for it

With regard to the latter, the major issue here IMO would be whether or not current law requires folk to jump some theistic hoop. A required theistic hoop-to-jump would IMO violate the establishment clause. But I don't think one's there: Buddhist "congregations", for example, which may not hold theistic beliefs are IMO eligible for the allowance

[cbayer]

10. I'm not sure it's about "theistic" beliefs, per se, but more about

whether it has religious underpinnings.

Non-theistic beliefs, including atheism, may qualify as “religious” beliefs in various contexts because they pertain to religion and fulfill a similar role in a person’s life

Anyway, it's an interesting issue.

[cbayer]

3. We knew that this was going to start happening to one degree or another.

The FFRF is in a tricky position here.

Interesting history on how the parsonage exemption came to be. As it is now so abused by some churches, it may be time to take a closer look at it.

At any rate, the atheism as religion question is going to come up over and over again, imo, and it's going to come up in response to FFRF filings about some organizations getting preference over others.

To me, this was the most interesting part.

But the facts here illustrate that it is conceivable that an atheist who does things that Ms. Gaylor and Mr. Barker do in light of their personally held beliefs and in the course of their employment could meet the requirements for the exclusion in § 107(2), including the definition for “minister” under its terms. Non-theistic beliefs, including atheism, may qualify as “religious” beliefs in various contexts because they pertain to religion and fulfill a similar role in a person’s life: [W]hen a person sincerely holds beliefs dealing with issues of “ultimate concern” that for her occupy a “place parallel to that filled by . . . God in traditionally religious persons,” those beliefs represent her religion. We have already indicated that atheism may be considered, in this specialized sense, a religion.