Columbus, OH – On Wednesday, The Buckeye Institute filed its response to the federal government’s appeal on a key issue in The Buckeye Institute v. Internal Revenue Service—one of the most important First Amendment cases in the country. This case challenges a decades-old tax law forcing nonprofit charities like The Buckeye Institute to hand over the private information (names and addresses) of donors to the federal government every year.

“Creating convenient lists of supporters for every 501(c)(3) organization and providing those donors’ names and addresses to the IRS is fundamentally un-American. It is also unconstitutional,” said Robert Alt, president and chief executive officer of The Buckeye Institute.

The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized a right to privacy implicit in the First Amendment, protecting not only free speech but also anonymous association. Just four years ago, in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, the U.S. Supreme Court found that this exact type of disclosure creates “an unnecessary risk of chilling in violation of the First Amendment...”

The district court previously found in Buckeye’s case that the IRS’s donor disclosure requirement should be subjected to “exacting scrutiny”—a heightened level of review that courts apply in First Amendment cases, which ensures that any compelled disclosure ‘reflect[s] the seriousness of the actual burden on’ speech and association.

The Buckeye Institute argues in its brief that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit should 1) affirm the district court’s decision below (which ruled against the government) that exacting scrutiny applies and 2) return the case to the trial court for further proceedings including discovery so that Buckeye can properly scrutinize the federal government’s claims.

The Buckeye Institute is represented in this case by its own in-house attorneys and the Institute for Free Speech.

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