The Orthodox Union — through its advocacy center — joined with other religious organizations in filing a “friend of the court” brief that defends a longstanding tax exemption for housing costs for rabbis, pastors, and other clergy in the face of a lower-court ruling finding the allowance unconstitutional.
The legal brief, authored by law professor Tom Berg, calls on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to overturn a 2017 ruling by the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin in the case of Gaylor v. Mnuchen.
The lawsuit, first brought by the Freedom from Religion Foundation in 2013, asserts that the 64-year-old tax provision providing clergy with a tax subsidy for housing costs — commonly known as “parsonage” — is a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
If the lower court’s ruling isn’t reversed, clergy and congregations in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, which fall under the Seventh District court’s jurisdiction, would initially be affected.
But because the tax code is part of U.S. law, the ruling could ultimately hurt hundreds of thousands of clergy and congregations across the country that have long relied on the vital tax exemptions. In the United States, 81 percent of full-time senior clergy receive a housing allowance, as do 75 percent of associate clergy and 67 percent of full-time solo clergy.
In a press release, Orthodox Union Advocacy Center Executive Director Nathan Diament stated: “Parsonage — the clergy housing allowance — has been relied upon by congregations for decades in how they recruit and compensate their clergy. It is one of many provisions in the tax code that subsidize the housing costs of people who must live in a particular location for the sake of their jobs. The legal brief the Orthodox Union joins in filing presents to the appeals court the massive disruption that will be caused if the parsonage allowance is invalidated.”
