Religious Groups Prevail In Lawsuit Challenging Johnson Amendment
TYLER, Texas — Averaging just over 200 in Sunday worship, First Baptist Church draws a 10th of Waskom – population 2,000 – to its sanctuary when it praises the Lord each Sunday.
But the small-town Southern Baptist Church carries a big stick, effectively challenging what it called an unequal application of the 71-year-old Johnson Amendment that prevented political comments from pulpits across the nation.
The church was among four plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service that ended July 7 with a binding consent judgment “enjoining the Defendants as well as their successors, agents, and employees, from enforcing the Johnson Amendment against Plaintiff Churches based on speech by a house of worship to its congregation in connection with religious services through its customary channels of communication on matters of faith, concerning electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith.”
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The Johnson Amendment, as it formerly restricted political comments from the pulpit, is null and void.
First Baptist Church of Waskom Senior Pastor Ivy Shelton chose not to comment on the case, but it was good news in Southern Baptist life.
Clint Pressley, in his second term as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, welcomed the judgment.
“Southern Baptists are a people of clear biblical conviction and sometimes those convictions show up in politics,” Pressley told Baptist Press. “The consent judgment recognizes our freedom of speech and should encourage pastors all the more to preach the Bible clearly, courageously, and convictionally.”
Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission Vice President Miles Mullin termed the consent judgment a good decision.
“Although it was rarely enforced, bad faith actors have used the Johnson Amendment as a tool to intimidate churches into remaining silent on a whole host of biblically informed electoral issues – not just specific candidates,” Mullin told Baptist Press. “This makes explicit what should have been clear all along.
“Just like other citizens, church leaders can exercise their First Amendment rights without fear of retribution if they are convinced that circumstances demand it. They are not required to give up their freedom to speak in order to exercise their freedom to worship.”
The National Religious Broadcasters, Sand Springs Church of Athens, Texas, and Intercessors for America were also plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed August 28, 2024, against the IRS and its Commissioner Billy Long in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.
The consent judgment allows churches not only to address congregations from the pulpit “when their religious beliefs compel them to take a position on electoral politics,” but also to address congregations through customary communication channels including published or distributed statements. In doing so, churches “neither ‘participate(s)’ nor ‘intervenes(s)’ in a ‘political campaign,’ within the ordinary meaning of those words. To ‘participate’ in a political campaign is ‘to take part’ in the political campaign, and to ‘intervene’ in a political campaign is ‘to interfere with the outcome or course’ of the political campaign,’ reads the consent that permanently enjoins the defendants.
The Johnson Amendment, the plaintiffs said in their original complaint, violated their First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion, their Fifth Amendment rights to due process of law and equal protection under the law, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The amendment altered the federal tax code to bar 501(c)(3) organizations “from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.” It was named after former President Lyndon Johnson of Texas, who was then a U.S. senator. But the law has not been enforced against churches, and the consent judgment acknowledges that it recognizes the law’s impact in practice.
Republicans in Congress have long fought the application of the Johnson Amendment against speech from the pulpit. Two Southern Baptists in Congress, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and Rep. Mark Harris (R-NC) reintroduced the Free Speech Fairness Act in March that would have stopped the IRS from enforcing the Johnson Amendment against churches and other nonprofits. It made it to the House floor in March, and a companion bill in the Senate is still in committee.
The bill mirrors a 2017 bill that failed to pass, but President Trump claimed in his first term that he had overturned the Johnson Amendment by executive order in May 2017.
Those opposed to the judgment claim potential abuse of campaign finance regulations, Politico reported.
Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, said the consent judgment “is not about religion or free speech, but about radically altering campaign finance laws.” The decree, she said in a July 7 statement “could open the floodgates for political operatives to funnel money to their preferred candidates while receiving generous tax breaks at the expense of taxpayers who may not share those views.”
This article has been republished with permission from Baptist Press.
Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.