Amending the Johnson Amendment in the Age of Cheap Speech

This is an excerpt from Professor Ellen Aprill's article published in the Illinois Law Review, in which Professor Aprill concludes: 

Charities can have enormous influence on political campaigns with little expense in today’s digital world. Contributions to charities are deductible; contributions to PACs and non-charitable section 501(c) organizations are not. Many who wish to intervene in political campaigns will shift their contribution from PACs and social welfare organizations to charities. I suspect that the Joint Committee of Taxation underestimates the revenue loss from even a five-year de minimis exception.

Under our current campaign finance regime, only dollars that have been taxed can be used for political intervention. A de minimis exception for campaign intervention for charities would undermine this basic principle. Moreover, over time, permitting charities to engage in partisan politics would reduce the respect long afforded to these entities and thus harm the sector. A de minimis exception to the campaign intervention prohibition would damage both the laws regulating charities and the laws regulating campaign finance. Our country would be far poorer for such changes.

Read the full article here.