The IRS on Monday declared churches may now endorse political candidates from the pulpit, making explicit an unspoken policy in effect for decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Other non-secular tax-exempt nonprofits or 501(3)(c) organizations must still adhere to the ban.

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The change came amid a lawsuit filed by two Texas churches and an association of Christian broadcasters, with a court filing by the IRS that carved out the exemption.

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The plaintiffs originally sued the IRS in the conservative district court in Texas to create an even broader exemption that would allow all nonprofits, religious and secular, to endorse candidates to their members.

That would have nullified the Johnson Amendment, introduced by then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas (D) in 1954 to prevent tax-exempt groups, including churches, from intervening in political campaigns at taxpayers’ expense.

The Johnson Amendment has been a longtime target of Christian Nationalists, who claim it’s an infringement on their First Amendment rights to free speech. President Trump has called for repeal of the Johnson Amendment, and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 seeks its demise.

For all its good intentions at separating church and state when it comes to political campaigns, the rule has been enforced for churches only laxly by the IRS under successive administrations.

Over the past few decades, only two churches have had their tax-exempt status revoked for violating the rule. In 1992, a group called Branch Ministries ran full-page newspaper ads urging people not to vote for Bill Clinton; their tax-exempt status was revoked soon after. Another lost its tax exemption in 2012.

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported that just 16 churches were investigated between 2011 and 2022 for violating the rule. At least one was fined.  

The IRS’s new interpretation of the Johnson Amendment, filed jointly in a motion with the plaintiffs in the Texas case, says that if a house of worship endorses a candidate to its congregants, the agency would now view that not as campaigning but as a private matter, like “a family discussion concerning candidates.”

Endorsements, the agency said, must be made through the “lens of religious faith.”

“Thus, communications from a house of worship to its congregation in connection with religious services through its usual channels of communication on matters of faith do not run afoul of the Johnson Amendment as properly interpreted,” the agency said.  

The IRS made clear that its revised interpretation still prohibits all non-profits from “participating” or “intervening” in a political campaign, meaning both active campaigning for a candidate and instances of “intervening” as Branch Ministries did in the Clinton campaign.

Still, critics maintain the change will open the floodgates to dark money used to promote candidates through churches, particularly Christian Nationalist aligned groups.

“The merger of tax-exempt conservative churches with the MAGA Republican Party is complete,” posted Congressman Jared Huffman (D-CA), co-founder of the Congressional Freethought Caucus. “American taxpayers are now subsidizing both partisan (mainly GOP) politics and religion.”

“Another day, another Project 2025 wish list item checked off by Donald Trump,” said Nick Fish, President of American Atheists. “The Johnson Amendment, imperfectly enforced as it is, is what has kept unaccountable billionaires from funneling their money through phony nonprofits and churches to buy our elections—while getting a tax deduction subsidized by the American people.”

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, agreed, adding, “The Trump administration’s radical reinterpretation of the Johnson Amendment is a brazen attack on church-state separation that threatens our democracy by favoring houses of worship over other nonprofits and inserting them into partisan politics. It’s President Trump and his Christian Nationalist allies’ signature move: exploiting religion to boost their own political power.”

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