The Catholic archbishop in San Francisco says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be denied Communion for her support of abortion rights. It’s a flareup of a debate that has previously ensnared other Catholic pro-choice politicians, including President Joe Biden. That debate is sure to become more common with the Supreme Court’s expected overturning of Roe v. Wade, forcing abortion policy front and center in Congress and in state legislatures.
Which makes this a good time to reiterate a valid principle regarding taxation, one that also happens to be federal law: A church or any other religious organization has every right to take a stand on abortion or any other topic. But when it casts that position in explicitly partisan terms, publicly condemning political parties or individual politicians by name, it has crossed into the realm of political campaigning, making it ineligible for tax-exempt status.
The Internal Revenue Service grants automatic 501(c)(3) tax exemption to churches and other nonprofit organizations — with the condition that the organization “does not participate in, or intervene in … any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” Note that the relevant issue isn’t whether the organization participates in public debates of topics that may be political in nature — that’s protected by the First Amendment and doesn’t violate tax-exempt status. The issue is whether the organization voices support or opposition to specific politicians or parties.
