Buckeye v. Big Brother: the fight for donor privacy
Buckeye v. Big Brother: the fight for donor privacy
Publish Date: 2026-05-04 06:00:00
Source Domain: www.washingtonexaminer.com
Sometimes, who you know matters more than what you know. But must you share with the federal government who you know or wish to support financially?
On April 29, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in Buckeye Institute v. IRS, challenging the IRS’s requirements that certain non-profit organizations disclose personal information about their “substantial donors.” On the very same day, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling defending freedom of association and donor privacy. The court should use Buckeye as an opportunity to further reaffirm the First Amendment’s protection of the right to anonymous association, which has been central to the American experiment.
The IRS requires many 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations to disclose the total number of contributions received every year as well as the names and addresses of all “substantial contributors.” Substantial contributors are those who contribute “an aggregate total of $5,000 per tax year, if the contributed amount is more than two percent of the total contributions the organization receives in a tax year.”
Although the IRS is required to keep this donor information confidential, time and again, “secure” government databases have been hacked, exposing the sensitive information of millions of Americans. In December 2024, Chinese state-sponsored hackers overrode the U.S. Treasury Department’s cybersecurity systems and stole unclassified documents in what the Treasury called a “major incident.”
As well as inviting threats from sinister actors, the IRS itself has repeatedly leaked the sensitive donor information of non-profit organizations. In 2022, the IRS accidentally posted taxpayer information for 501(c)(3)s reported on Form 990-T.
Even worse, in 2014, an IRS employee disclosed an unredacted Form 990 for the National Organization for Marriage, a group advocating laws to define marriage as between a man and a woman, to a person claiming to be a…
