Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Zhang: Antidiscrimination And Tax Exemption
Alex Zhang (J.D. 2021, Yale), Antidiscrimination and Tax Exemption, 107 Cornell L. Rev. __ (2022):
The Supreme Courtroom held, in Bob Jones College v. United States, that violations of elementary public coverage—together with race discrimination in training—disqualify an entity for tax exemption. The holding of the case was broad, and its outcomes cohered with the beliefs of progressive society: the federal government ought to not subsidize discrimination, particularly of marginalized teams. However nearly 4 a long time later, the choice has by no means realized its liberal, antidiscriminatory potential. The IRS has restricted implementation to the narrowest information of the case. The scholarly literature has not formulated a scientific account of the best way to implement the Bob Jones regime, in gentle of the enlargement of antidiscrimination protections and the Courtroom’s reasoning that’s deeply rooted in common-law charity. On the identical time, tax-exempt entities interact in a smattering of discriminatory actions, usually with impunity.
This Article argues for extending the enforcement of Bob Jones to antidiscrimination on the idea of all protected traits. It first exhibits, via an examination of IRS written determinations, the insufficient scope of implementation by the company, which has restricted denials of tax exemption to racially discriminatory faculties. Second, it contends that the objectives of antidiscrimination and common-law charity coincide: each goal to ameliorate inequality by facilitating the entry of marginalized populations into the labor market. This affinity additional justifies the Courtroom’s holding that tax exemption requires conformity to the necessities of charity and established public coverage. Third, it affords implementation methods to attenuate backlash and sketches a path towards an administrative mannequin of antidiscrimination enforcement. Because the Biden Administration continues to implement Bostock in its efforts to strengthen the federal antidiscrimination regime, Bob Jones may function a potent mechanism of advancing civil-rights enforcement.
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2022/02/zhang-antidiscrimination-and-tax-exemption.html
