A federal appeals court on Tuesday unanimously affirmed an order blocking the Internal Revenue Service from sharing taxpayer addresses with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, dealing another defeat to the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.
“After the Watergate scandal exposed executive branch abuses of U.S. taxpayers’ information to harass the Administration’s enemies, Congress enacted a prohibition against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sharing tax return information with any other federal agency unless the requesting agency meets stringent conditions,” U.S. Circuit Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote at the start of a 32-page opinion.
U.S. Circuit Judges Patricia Millett and Robert L. Wilkins joined the decisions. All three were appointed by former President Barack Obama.
A little more than a year ago, the Trump administration sought to circumvent those rules. ICE placed a request for more than 1.2 million records, and the IRS disclosed roughly 47,000 taxpayer addresses before multiple federal judges blocked the sharing of that information.
Center for Taxpayer Rights, Main Street Alliance, and two labor unions pursued the D.C.-based litigation, represented by the advocacy group Democracy Forward.
Judge Pillard found that the procedure the Trump administration created for sharing taxpayer information was a far cry from the exacting standards Congress demanded in post-Watergate legislation passed in 1976, abandoning an “individualized review” in favor of a “mass, automated review of millions of records at the press of a button.”
The judge reminded the government that violations of the statute carry serious penalties.
“The government and its personnel face steep civil and criminal consequences for willful disclosure of information in violation of section 6103,” she wrote, citing the possible imprisonment and heavy fines under the relevant statute.
Although the IRS argued that stopping it from sharing taxpayer information with ICE would impede criminal investigations, the three-judge panel said: “that’s a gripe with Congress, not the court.”
“The government has no legitimate interest in conducting criminal investigations in violation of the statute,” the order notes.
Swatting down another “weak sauce” argument by the IRS, the appellate court brushed away concerns that the injunction requires a judge’s approval to launch criminal investigations. Such notifications can be made “under seal” to protect investigations from public scrutiny.
“Importantly, the district court’s advance notice requirement reasonably balances the government’s interest in making lawful disclosures with the plaintiffs’ interest in preventing unlawful disclosures that, if made, would likely be difficult or impossible to remedy,” the ruling states.
Democracy Forward’s president and CEO Skye Perryman celebrated the ruling.
“The Trump-Vance administration’s dangerous data sharing policies have resulted in the violation of the privacy rights of millions of Americans, and we are pleased the court has again acted to stop this unlawful behavior,” Perryman told All Rise News. “The privacy laws enacted in the post-Watergate era exist to prevent abuses of power just like this. The administration has already admitted to being careless and irresponsible with our sensitive, personal information, and now yet another court has held the administration in check.”
Read the ruling in full here.
Will any penalties be imposed and on whom? Will any current DOJ lawyer retain his/her law license when this regime ends?
Good news!