A local municipal ordinance requiring a charitable organization to pay for public support of a substantial fundraising event has been ruled unconstitutional on its face and as applied by a federal District Court in Pennsylvania.  The Court, which had previously ruled on a motion for summary judgment that the ordinance was unconstitutional on its face, has now ruled that it is also unconstitutional as applied to the situation under review.

The Constitution of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People includes a provision providing that a member who sues the Association with respect to internal matters of the Association shall indemnify the Association and its officers and directors against all costs in defending the Association, without regard to the outcome of such litigation.  It provides that the group’s claim shall be brought in Baltimore, MD.

The 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a trial court decision and allowed a black rights nonprofit to sue for violation of the First and 14^th Amendments when Pinellas County revoked an authorized grant and denied a second grant of Covid-relief funds.  It has found that the African People’s Education and Defense Fund (“APEDF”) has alleged sufficient facts to survive a motion to dismiss.

A Pennsylvania charity seeking real estate tax exemption for a multi-parcel facility does not need to show that the activity on each parcel of the facility would separately meet the five-part test for charitable use, the Commonwealth Court has recently affirmed.  If the organization itself meets the definition of an institution of purely public charity eligible for exemption, it merely has to show that the parcel is actually and regularly used for the purposes of the organization.

Massachusetts’ charitable immunity law that immunizes charities against tort liability in excess of $20,000 does not protect a charity from having to pay a plaintiffs’ legal fees to enforce a civil contempt citation when the defendants failed to comply with court orders, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has ruled.

New Jersey has had a tortured history with the judicially created doctrine of charitable immunity.

According to the state Supreme Court, the state Supreme Court, like courts or legislatures of most states in the country, rejected the theory of charitable immunity, which holds that people who give to charitable organizations should not have those funds diverted to pay for judgments for people injured by the organization.  The Supreme Court reversed its prior acceptance of charitable immunity in a series of cases in 1958 and abolished the rule for the state.

Shane and Victoria McCartney, relative newcomers to the town of Welcome, MN, decided to participate in a program called “Going Hog-Wild in Martin County.” The program distributes dozens of artistically painted cement pigs throughout the county as a promotion of Martin County.  The county is the largest hog producing county in the state and the sixth largest hog producer in the country.