Ways and Means Witnesses Urge Revocation of Hate Groups’ Tax Exemption

I am not yet convinced that Palestinian rights advocacy groups — like the National Students for Justice in Palestinian — are “hate groups.” We too often conflate Palestinian rights group with Hamas these days.  Some of the witnesses at Ways and Means’ hearing on tax exemption for universities and groups they host might be guilty of that conflation.  Two of them asserted that the First Amendment does not prevent the government from revoking tax exempt status for hate groups, an assertion with which I agree.  But overall, I thought the hearing was a missed opportunity because the witness list included no higher education law experts.  I used to be a member of the National Association of College and University Attorneys and can tell you that there are some very knowledgeable people in that group who could have taught us about campus speech codes, and how the First Amendment restricts university administrators’ efforts to police campus speech.  Still, I was interested to hear the testimony from those witnesses.  The first, Jonathan Schanzer, stated that hate groups have no place in Congress, on campus, or in 501(c)(3).  Another witness, Jonathan Greenblatt stated categorically that the IRS can and should revoke tax exempt status for hate groups.  Neither witness, though, established a sufficient factual predicate nor did they engage in any sort of analysis towards a constitutional rule of law that would allow revocation.  They are both correct, but they essentially presented “there oughta be a law” type arguments. 

darryll k. jones