The federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ruled that the National Labor Relations Board cannot force Duquesne University, a Catholic university in Pittsburgh, PA, to bargain with its adjunct faculty members under the National Labor Relations Act.  In a divided opinion, it has extended the exclusion previously applied to all regular faculty members at a religious institution to its adjunct faculty as well.

An antique car museum in Maine that is a permissible beneficiary of a separate trust created by the museum’s founder to support antique car museums has standing to sue the trustees of the trust and reopen the litigation, even after the trustees have settled the claims with the state Attorney General.  The Supreme Judicial Court of Maine has reversed a trial court decision dismissing the claims.

A federal District Court in the District of Columbia has dismissed a case challenging the constitutionality of requiring a 501(c)(3) organization of religious nonbelievers to file an annual Form 990 tax information return while not requiring churches to do so also.  

More than ten years after Ruston Louisiana Hospital Company, LLC purchased substantially all of the assets of Lincoln General Hospital from the Lincoln Health System and began operating the hospital on a for-profit basis, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services gave Ruston notice that it was being asked to repay more than $700,000 in overpayments of Medicare made to Lincoln before the sale. 

Old White Charities, which operates the Greenbrier Classic golf tournament on the Professional Golfers’ Association tour to raise funds for charitable purposes, ran a promotional contest for the 2015 event to give a cash gift to anyone in the stands at the time a golfer shot a hole-in-one on the 18^th hole.  It engaged an insurance broker to obtain insurance to cover any payout that might be necessary if someone actually shot a hole-in-one.

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has rejected an attempt by the state’s Attorney General to close down a volunteer fire company that had been prohibited from fighting fires in its community and to force the transfer of its assets to a different company continuing to serve the area.  The Court rejected the AG’s claim that all of the assets of the decertified company were held “in trust” and should be transferred under the cy pres provisions of the state’s Trust Code when it became “impracticable” for it to pursue its mission.

The total number of donor advised funds and total value of their assets continued to grow significantly in 2018, according to the latest annual report by the National Philanthropic Trust.