A federal District Court in Texas has upheld an IRS denial of a $1.257 million charitable contribution deduction claim for a gift to a donor advised fund because, it said, the contemporary written acknowledgment of the gift did not say the money was held under the “exclusive legal control” of the recipient charity.  The Court said that the Contemporaneous Written Acknowledgment could not be combined with the gift agreement, which provided for ultimate authority and control of the assets, to meet the requirements of the Treasury regulations.

When People’s United Bank in New York City closed the accounts of a Black Muslim Senegalese-American woman and a “Muslim nonprofit” she controlled, she sued the bank for alleged discrimination on the basis of race, religion and national origin.  

Should the federal criminal sentencing guideline be used to add an extra eight to ten months in prison for the executive director of a charity who embezzled about $150,000 from the agency when the guideline says a two-level enhancement should be applied when the offence involves “a misrepresentation that the defendant was acting on behalf of a charitable” organization?

A federal District Court in Illinois said it should be applied.  The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has said not so fast.

When the finance officer of the Catholic Diocese of Jackson, MS, who had been appointed for a five-year term under the Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church, was fired by the bishop in 2018 and was unsuccessful in pursuing internal appeals, he sued not only for wrongful termination, but also for defamation and negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress. 

The trial court that recently ruled that the New York Attorney General did not have grounds to force a judicial dissolution of the National Rifle Association (See Nonprofit Issues^®, Vol. XXXII, No. 2) has denied counterclaims by the NRA seeking to dismiss the entire case as unconstitutionally retaliatory or selective.  The Court has ruled that the AG may continue to pursue a variety of other claims against the organization and individual defendants.

A trial court in Michigan may tell an incorporated church to hold a new annual election for directors and may tell the church that certain members may vote in the election, an appellate court has held.  The ecclesiastical abstention did not apply to questions of interpretation of the state nonprofit corporation law.