The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 passed at the end of the last session of Congress includes three provisions that are of specific importance to charities and other nonprofits. 

A charitable estate planning firm did not breach a fiduciary duty to a married couple by failing to disclose the full basis of their fee arrangement with charitable beneficiaries of the plan, a California Court of Appeal has affirmed.  Two daughters who sought to overturn the estate plan that reduced bequests to them have been rebuffed in a family fight over the estate.

The California anti-SLAPP statute “has failed miserably,” says a California Court of Appeal in dismissing a third appeal involving legal fees awarded in litigation over the direction of the Newport Aquatic Center in Newport Beach.

When the Free Speech Foundation, doing business as America’s Frontline Doctors (“AFLDS”), and its Chairman of the Board filed suit in federal court alleging that its founder was going rogue and interfering with its activities, they were required to prove that the “citizenship” of all of the defendants was different from the citizenship of all of the plaintiffs in order to obtain “diversity jurisdiction” to have a federal court to hear the case.

The Attorney General of New York has permanently barred the former CEO of the Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies in the Buffalo area from serving in a fiduciary capacity for any charity active in New York state after finding that the CEO misused approximately $3.1 million in donor advised and other funds held by the organization.