by

A quick announcement, and a quick related link:

I’ve been blogging about the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s suit challenging the parsonage allowance for several years, both here and at Surly Subgroup (and, at least once, at Times and Seasons). And, a week from Wednesday, the Seventh Circuit is going to hear oral arguments in the case. Right here in Chicago! Which means you know where I’ll be Wednesday, Oct. 24, at 9:30 am.

And, in anticipation of the case, Professor Anthony Kreis and I are going to do a preview of the case. This Wednesday at noon, here at the Loyola University Chicago law school. If you’re in the Chicagoland area, please feel free to come. The discussion will be great, and there’ll be pizza! (If you’re interested in coming, I’m attaching the official announcement at the bottom of this post; please RSVP here so we have a rough count of how much pizza to order.)

Second thing: the Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed a new constitutional tax challenge. See, most tax-exempt organizations are required to filed information returns with the IRS. Those returns must also be made available to the public. Churches, however, are exempt from the information return requirement, which is one reason why we don’t know much about the finances of the Mormon church, among other religious organizations. I blogged some preliminary thoughts about the suit here. (Tl;dr: preliminarily, I’m not convinced that this suit can succeed, but that’s on blog-level research and thought, so it’s possible that I’m wrong.)