\u201cWe have good news to share!\u201d said an update from Brethren Benefit Trust (BBT) about a court case that had the potential to seriously affect the tax status of clergy housing allowances. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the clergy housing allowance case brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. is to be vacated (eliminated) and remanded (sent back) to the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin with instructions to dismiss the case. The court ruled that the plaintiffs have no standing to bring a complaint.<\/p>\n
The case would have affected ministers in three states–Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana–but could have set precedent for the rest of the nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we celebrate the good news of the 7th Circuit Court\u2019s ruling to dismiss the case brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., we do want to emphasize that the ruling to dismiss was based on the procedural ground of standing,\u201d said a statement from Scott W. Douglas, BBT director of Employee Benefits.<\/p>\n
The following excerpt from the court\u2019s decision summarizes this point:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plaintiffs here argue that they have standing because they were denied a benefit (a tax exemption for their employer-provided housing allowance) that is conditioned on religious affiliation. This argument fails, however, for a simple reason: the plaintiffs were never denied the parsonage exemption because they never asked for it. Without a request, there can be no denial. And absent any personal denial of a benefit, the plaintiffs\u2019 claim amounts to nothing more than a generalized grievance about \u00a7 107(2)\u2019s unconstitutionality, which does not support standing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Douglas added, \u201cWe will continue to monitor this situation and keep you informed as long as there is a possibility that the FFRF will continue to bring legal challenges to the clergy housing allowance.\u201d<\/p>\n
An amicus curiae brief in the case had been filed by the Church Alliance–a coalition of the chief executive officers of 38 denominational benefit programs including BBT. Church of the Brethren general secretary Stan Noffsinger and associate general secretary Mary Jo Flory-Steury, who is executive of the denomination\u2019s Ministry Office, had signed on in support of the brief. BBT president Nevin Dulabaum is the denomination\u2019s representative on the Church Alliance.<\/p>\n
The name of the case is Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., et al. v. Jacob Lew, et al. (FFRF v. Lew). The US government had appealed a decision by Judge Barbara Crabb, US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (November 2013), that Code \u00a7107(2) is unconstitutional. Code \u00a7107(2), commonly called \u201cclergy housing exclusion\u201d or \u201cclergy housing allowance,\u201d excludes from income taxation the cash compensation provided to \u201cministers of the gospel\u201d (clergy) toward the cost of their housing.<\/p>\n
This section of the IRS code essentially excludes the value of clergy-owned housing from income taxation. It is related to Code \u00a7107(1), which excludes from a minister\u2019s taxable income the value of church-provided housing (commonly called a parsonage, vicarage, or manse).<\/p>\n
The Church Alliance brief focused on the jurisprudential history of permitted legislative accommodations of religion arguing that Code \u00a7107(2) is a constitutionally permitted accommodation of religion when viewed in the context of Code \u00a7107(1), the parsonage exclusion, and Code \u00a7119, which excludes employer-provided housing from employees\u2019 incomes in numerous secular circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWe have good news to share!\u201d said an update from Brethren Benefit Trust (BBT) about a court case that had the potential to seriously affect the tax status of clergy housing allowances. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the clergy housing allowance case brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. is to be vacated (eliminated) and remanded (sent back) to the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin with instructions to dismiss the case. The court ruled that the plaintiffs have no standing to bring a complaint. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[160,1267],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":["post-9449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brethren-benefit-trust","tag-ministry-office"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9449"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12478,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9449\/revisions\/12478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9449"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=9449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}