Lead Stories

After years of uncertainty about the registration requirements for GoFundMe pages, Facebook solicitations, or other internet-based crowd-fundraising methods, California has passed amendments to its charitable solicitation registration act to cover what it calls “charitable fundraising platforms” and “platform charities” and to bring them under regulation by the state Attorney General. 

A federal District Court in Connecticut has enjoined the state from enforcing some of the charitable solicitation act provisions regulating professional solicitors pending trial on the constitutionality of the rules.  The Court has limited the scope of a preliminary injunction solely to enforcement against the plaintiff in the case, but the ultimate decision could impact the regulation of solicitors generally under state charitable solicitation registration acts.

When the widow of British explorer and artist Herbert Ward gave the family collection of 2241 ethnographic objects, including 19 bronze sculptures of Congolese people, to the Smithsonian Institution in 1920, she included a requirement in the agreement that the collection be kept together and that the sculptures be displayed in a room or “reasonably conspicuous part” of the building open to the public “at all times.”

An alleged hate group may be rejected from the Amazon Smiles donation to charity program, the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals has held.  The Court has affirmed the District Court decision holding that the Southern Poverty Law Center did not defame the group and that Amazon did not discriminate on the basis of religion.

After nearly a decade of litigation over whether states may require charities seeking to register to solicit charitable contributions to file a complete copy of their Form 990 tax information return, including an unredacted Schedule B containing the names of significant donors, the 6-3 conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the requirement violates the donors’ First Amendment right of association, a question that is “not even close” according to two of the Justices. 

The National Rifle Association, sued last summer by the Attorney General of New York seeking to dissolve the organization and recover large sums from top officials for breach of fiduciary duty, has failed in an effort to use bankruptcy as a vehicle to move the corporation to Texas.   A Bankruptcy Court in the Northern District of Texas has ruled that the case was not filed in good faith.