The Tax Court has denied a charitable contribution deduction for charitable gifts made from a testamentary trust when the trust did not specifically authorize such gifts.  The Court reached its decision despite the fact that the trustees had been making such gifts and deducting them periodically for nearly 50 years and had obtained a state probate court judgment that such gifts had been permitted since the inception of the trust.

The Appeals Court of Massachusetts has affirmed a trial court decision holding that students at Harvard University lack standing to challenge the university’s endowment investment policy and force it to divest its investments in fossil fuel companies.  (See Nonprofit Issues, 4/15.) The Court has agreed that they have no special personal right affected by the investments, and that they have no standing to represent “future generations.”

The board of directors of a nonprofit homeowners’ association may not bar a fellow director from attending executive sessions of the board because she violated confidentiality requests.  An appellate court in Arizona has reversed a trial court decision denying the excluded director’s application for a preliminary injunction to overturn the ban.  (McNally v. Sun Lakes Homeowners Association, Ct. of App., AZ, No. 1 CA-CV-15-0744, 10/13/16.)

“The question of who can speak for the animals has long vexed federal judges in animal-welfare cases,” a judge in the federal District Court for the District of Columbia has written recently.  “As a general matter, courts have concluded that well-established principles of Article III standing permit human beings to invoke their own injuries in fact to challenge harms done to animals, but it can be exceptionally confusing to apply settled standing doctrine to determine when and under what circumstances an act that is allegedly harmful to animals works a cognizable injury in fact to huma