The founder of the state's Tea Party Coalition says the Internal Revenue Service should be "shut down" after a judge acknowledged in an opinion that agents targeted conservative groups based on their political beliefs.
"It's political warfare for people to use their political power to go after others because of their points of view," said Jane Aitken of the New Hampshire Tea Party Coalition. "I think it's criminal, and they should be shut down for it. It's something out of a police state or communist China or Cuba. Not America."
Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court in Washington shot down a Tea Party group's effort to permanently prohibit the IRS from targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny, issuing a ruling Thursday that says the tax agency has taken enough steps to correct the problem.
Judge Walton also refused a request by True the Vote, a Texas-based group that tries to combat election fraud, to make Lois G. Lerner and other current and former IRS employees pay a penalty for having blocked the conservative group's tax-exempt status and making intrusive inquiries into the group's activities.
Suits no longer necessary
Because the IRS changed how it considered Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status and approved most of the groups involved in the lawsuit, Walton ruled the conservative organizations no longer had a reason to sue.
Without ruling on whether the initial targeting was unlawful, the judge said the case was moot because the IRS eventually did approve tax-exempt status.
True the Vote argued that the IRS was pressured into stopping the targeting, but could restart it at any time. The group asked the court to issue an order prohibiting the IRS from targeting, but the judge declined.
"The defendants' grant of tax-exempt status to the plaintiff, and the defendants' suspension of the alleged IRS targeting scheme during the tax-exempt application process, including remedial steps to address the alleged conduct, coupled with the reduced 'concern about the recurrence of objectionable behavior' government actors ... convinces the court that the 'voluntary cessation' exception is not applicable here," wrote Judge Walton in a decision posted online. "The allegedly unconstitutional governmental conduct, which had delayed the processing of the plaintiffs' tax-exempt applications and spawned this litigation, is no longer impacting the plaintiffs."
Long process
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Tea Party groups 'stunned' by court's decision on IRS