GreenvilleOnline reports that the fundamentalist Christian university, has finally regained its status that is non-profit 34 after losing it:
Bob Jones University destroyed its income tax exemption after a 13-year fight with the IRS over or perhaps a university’s policies against interracial relationship precluded it being a non-taxable spiritual institution that is educational. The college didn’t acknowledge any black colored pupils until 1971, 17 years after Brown vs. Board of Education. After that it wouldn’t acknowledge any pupils have been in a marriage that is mixed-race developed guidelines to prohibit pupils from interracial relationship.
Bob Jones, in Greenville, sc, is a distinct segment college. Indeed, you could have just been aware of it if you’re from the Christian fundamentalist background or closely follow that subculture. However the tale of exactly exactly just how Bob Jones destroyed its non-profit status provides prompt understanding of the modern spiritual right.
Bob Jones didn’t lose status that is non-profit. Nor had been it an outlier at that time. Although its discriminatory policies preceded desegregation, historian Randall Balmer has noted so it destroyed its status that is non-profit due President Nixon’s crackdown on alleged “segregation academies.” (the type of segregation academies: Jerry Falwell’s Lynchburg Christian class.) Bob Jones received many warnings through the federal government and ignored every one of them, nevertheless when the IRS finally rescinded its status the spiritual right reacted with outrage, as Balmer recounts:
As Elmer L. Rumminger, longtime administrator at Bob Jones University, said in a job interview, the IRS actions against their college “alerted the Christian college community by what might happen with federal government disturbance” within the affairs of evangelical organizations. “That ended up being actually the major problem that got us all involved.”
Bob Jones finished its ban merely a 17 years ago—right before then-President George W. Bush visited campus. The father moves in not-so-mysterious means.
Although Bob Jones’s ban is history, it left an important imprimatur from the spiritual right. Evangelicals nevertheless fear secular disturbance with sacred affairs. It’s embedded deeply into the movement’s rhetoric and priorities that are political. It motivates their opposition to anti-discrimination conditions and their 
fear-mongering that is ongoing about First Amendment legal rights of Christian schools. Simply yesterday, the Alliance Defending Freedom’s Casey Mattox urged your house Judiciary Committee to get rid of Christian universities from the Department that is public of range of organizations which have gotten exemptions from Title IX. And who is able to forget that 80 % of white evangelicals simply voted for the openly racist Donald Trump?
Bob Jones’s crusade to discriminate nevertheless haunts the spiritual right, even though the movement’s modern leaders are reluctant to acknowledge it.
The Supreme Court’s ruling
The Supreme Court sought to balance the values of freedom of religion and related First Amendment concerns with federal law and public policy prohibiting racial discrimination in its review of the cases. The court traced the past reputation for taxation exemptions for charitable organizations, quoting from the landmark 1861 choice in Perin v. Carey:
It offers now become an existing concept of US legislation, that courts of chancery will maintain and protect…a gift…to public charitable uses, supplied exactly the same is in keeping with regional laws and regulations and general public policy.
The Supreme Court’s analysis in Bob Jones unveiled listed here facts that are key. First, tax-exempt organizations must provide a general general public function through methods which do not break policy that is public. The court remarked that Bob Jones University’s admission policy demonstrably discriminated against African Us americans in a violation that is direct of policy. Second, under IRC conditions, sectarian organizations may not be tax-exempt if their religious doctrines trigger violations of law. Third, the IRS failed to go beyond its authority in doubting income tax exemptions to Bob Jones University and Goldsboro Christian Schools. Indeed, the court reasoned that the IRS’s ruling had been totally in keeping with past declarations through the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of federal federal government. 4th, the government’s desire for eliminating racial discrimination outweighs a private institution’s exercise of their spiritual values. Demonstrably, the court maintained, the spiritual interests of Bob Jones University were contrary to the passions and legal rights associated with government in addition to average man or woman.
In sum, the Supreme Court’s viewpoint in Bob Jones represents the idea that because nonprofit, private universities and schools that enforce discriminatory admission policies according to religious doctrine usually do not be eligible for taxation exemptions, contributions to such organizations aren’t deductible as charitable contributions inside the meaning regarding the Internal income Code. In 2000 Bob Jones University acknowledged so it was indeed incorrect in maybe maybe perhaps not admitting African American pupils and lifted its ban on interracial relationship.
