Court Blasts IRS For Stonewalling in Tea Party Lawsuit; Demands the IRS Stop Dragging Its Feet and Release the Names of All Groups Targeted

Enough of the stalling -- now the IRS has two weeks to comply.

The IRS has been giving the courts the run-around for a year.

In a last bit of lawless bullshit, the IRS sought a writ of mandamus from the Court of Appeals to, I think, compel the district court judge (who'd ruled they must disclose the names) to reverse his ordering.

The Court of Appeals has had enough.

In a blistering rebuke of the IRS, a Cincinnati-based federal appeals court has ordered the tax-collecting agency to quit stalling and produce the names of organizations it targeted based on their political leanings.

The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit gave the IRS two weeks to turn over the documents sought as part of a class-action lawsuit brought by the NorCal Tea Party Patriots.

"The lawyers in the Department of Justice have a long and storied tradition of defending the nation’s interests and enforcing its laws... The conduct of the IRS’s attorneys in the district court falls outside that tradition," the opinion said.

..

"The lawsuit has progressed as slowly as the underlying applications themselves: at every turn the IRS has resisted the plaintiffs' requests for information regarding the IRS’s treatment of the plaintiff class, eventually to the open frustration of the district court," the judges claimed in court documents.

...

"The district court ordered production of those lists, and did so again over an IRS motion to reconsider. Yet, almost a year later, the IRS still has not complied with the court's orders. Instead the IRS now seeks from this court a writ of mandamus, an extraordinary remedy reserved to correct only the clearest abuses of power by a district court," Judge Raymond Kethledge wrote. "We deny the petition."

Full opinion here.

In one section, the court rebuts the IRS' claim that they can't release information about some groups, due to privacy laws protecting them. But the court notes that groups who have already been granted exemptions are already publicly noted -- therefore, it makes no sense to say that you can't release their names. They're already in the public records of the US.

The court calls the IRS' claim here "patently meritless."

They seem pissed off. They should be.

Thanks to Vic.

posted by Ace at 04:22 PM

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