November 26, 2025
RALEIGH — The John Locke Foundation has joined the State Policy Network (SPN) in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in The Buckeye Institute v. Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The parties of the brief urge the court to apply exacting scrutiny in its evaluation of an IRS rule that requires 501(c)(3) nonprofits to report the names and addresses of their major donors.
Freedom of association and expression are foundational tenets of our Constitution, and the law has been clear that these freedoms include longstanding protections for anonymous association. Forcing organizations to disclose the identities of their supporters chills participation, deters charitable giving, and exposes donors to the risk of retaliation or harassment.
For these reasons, the IRS should have to demonstrate that forced donor disclosure is a (1) narrowly tailored rule, that has a (2) substantial relation to a (3) sufficiently important government interest. If the court is unconvinced (as we are) that forced donor disclosure meets any of these criteria, it should strike down forced donor disclosure.
“Anonymous expression is indispensable to the First Amendment,” said Jessica Thompson, Director of Government Affairs and General Counsel for the John Locke Foundation. “It focuses attention on the message rather than the messenger and prevents audiences from prejudging an idea based on the identity of the speaker. Government-mandated disclosures, on the other hand, deter participation in constitutionally protected activities and invite harassment and retaliation.”
America’s commitment to donor privacy is grounded in the lessons of the civil rights era. In NAACP v. Alabama in 1958, the Supreme Court struck down Alabama’s attempt to force the NAACP to hand over its member lists, recognizing that disclosure would expose individuals to harassment, violence, and social pressure. The Court affirmed that people must be able to support organizations and ideas without fear — a principle central to the freedoms of the First Amendment.
The fear of retaliation is still alive and well in America, and financial supporters of charitable organizations deserve these same constitutional protections of anonymity. Our filing details several modern, real-world examples of threats, intimidation, and violence aimed at individuals publicly associated with issue-advocacy organizations.
The IRS rule goes well beyond defining the scope of a tax exemption and instead forces organizations to relinquish a core constitutional right as a condition of receiving a widely available public benefit.
Because disclosure mandates burden private speech and private association, the IRS cannot rely on mere rational-basis review. Under that type of review, the government would need to prove only that a rational basis exists for adopting its rule. In this case, courts must instead apply meaningful constitutional scrutiny—scrutiny that we contend the IRS’s donor-disclosure requirement cannot survive.
The Sixth Circuit has granted interlocutory review to determine the proper level of scrutiny. That means appellate judges agreed to take the case before a trial court issued a final decision on the merits. Our amicus brief urges the court to affirm that exacting scrutiny applies and to ensure robust First Amendment protection for all nonprofit organizations and their supporters.
“The right to associate anonymously, particularly when expressing minority viewpoints, is essential to a functioning democracy,” Thompson continued. “That’s why Locke is proud to join the State Policy Network in supporting the Buckeye Institute in its constitutional challenge to the IRS’s mandatory disclosure requirements, which violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.”