The number of donors reporting noncash contributions on their individual tax returns dropped in tax year 2021, but the total value of their gifts increased, according to statistics released by the Internal Revenue Service in April.  The numbers reflect a continuing trend from returns for 2019, the year before the pandemic, through 2020, the partial year of the pandemic, and 2021, a full year on the pandemic.  Fewer donors are giving, but they are giving more money.

A federal District Court in Texas has dismissed a complaint brought by a 44-year-old white woman who complained that she was discriminated against by Amazon’s diversity grant program for Black, Hispanic, and Native American owners of delivery service partners.  She claimed she was discriminated against because the grants are not available to white or Asian owners.  The Court said she had not alleged an injury sufficient to establish that she had standing to bring the case.

A new case has been filed that may be the vehicle to challenge the Tax Code limitations on lobbying and electioneering for charities.  According to reports in the EO Tax Journal, a petition for declaratory judgment has been filed in Students and Academics for Free Expression, Speech and Political Action in Campus Education, Inc. v.

The Supreme Court of Minnesota has affirmed a decision of the state Tax Court that property owned by a low-income housing charity and rented to low-income residents is exempt from real estate tax.  The taxing authority had argued that the charity had to provide additional services in order to qualify for exemption.

An employee of the Zionist Organization of America, a New York not-for-profit corporation, may pursue a claim under the New York statute requiring certain nonprofits to adopt and implement a whistleblower protection law.  An appellate court in New York has reversed a trial court decision dismissing the whistleblower claim because the employer failed to refute the plaintiff’s allegation that he was an employee of the corporation.

A U.S. private foundation that loaned a physician on its staff to an international agency that conducted nonconsensual human medical experiments cannot be held liable for the actions of the loaned executive when it did not have control over his activities, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed.  The Court has upheld the earlier decision of a federal District Court in Maryland holding that the foundation could not be liable because the physician was not acting as its agent in conducting the experiments.