VICTORY: ACLJ Scores Win on Behalf of 78 Members of Congress and 13 States Over Biden's Unconstitutional Tax Mandate

By 

Jordan Sekulow

|
November 17, 2021

5 min read

Radical Left

A

A

The ACLJ just scored a major victory for hardworking American taxpayers, defeating the Biden Administration’s unconstitutional attempt to strip individual states of their own authority in federal court. A federal district court just struck down the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer ban on states lowering taxes.

We told you about President Biden, House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Schumer, and the radical Left’s gross overreach of power, telling states they are not allowed to lower their residents’ taxes, but maintaining the right of the federal government and states to raise taxes all they want.

As we stated:

[T]he Schumer-Pelosi-led U.S. Senate and House of Representatives opted to use the budget reconciliation process to approve a partisan sixth stimulus bill. This resulted in a law littered with problems, but one of the worst is a last-minute provision slipped in that functionally prohibits states from lowering state taxes anytime between now and 2024. In other words, throughout President Biden’s first term.

In May, we filed an amicus brief on behalf of 78 Members of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House, led by Senators Mike Crapo and Tim Scott and Representatives Jim Banks and Kevin Brady, in the lawsuit brought by 13 states in federal district court in Alabama.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because just a month earlier, we told you about another amicus brief we had filed on behalf of 19 U.S. Senators and 55 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives – also led by Senators Crapo and Scott, and Rep. Jim Banks – in support of an Ohio lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s ban on states lowering taxes. In that case, the federal court agreed with our argument – that the tax cut ban was unconstitutionally ambiguous  – and barred the Biden Administration from enforcing the unconstitutional Tax Mandate.

Now the federal court in Alabama just issued its Opinion and Order, granting the states' request for a permanent injunction barring enforcement of the provision of ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) that constructively forbade states that receive ARPA/COVID-19 relief funds from lowering their residents’ taxes.

As stated in the federal judge's opinion:

Accordingly, the Court finds no precedential authority that would proscribe its ruling today that Congress exceeded its Spending Clause authority in crafting an unconstitutionally ambiguous spending condition in the Tax Mandate.

The court denied the Biden Treasury Department's motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, and determined that Congress had indeed exceeded its authority under the Spending Clause. In a victory for states and taxpayers, the court’s final judgment ruled:

Defendant, the Secretary of the Treasury, is hereby PERMANENTLY ENJOINED from seeking enforcement of the Tax Mandate, 42 U.S.C. § 802(c)(2)(A), against the Plaintiff States.

The federal court’s ruling is a win for federalism and the Constitution. It's also a win for members of the ACLJ and the Members of Congress we represented in our amicus brief.

U.S. Senators Mike Crapo (ID) and Tim Scott (SC), our lead Senators on the brief, made the following joint statement: "This ruling reaffirms there was no public policy justification in the Democrats' COVID spending bill for taking away states' ability to make fiscal decisions. Qualifying the receipt of relief funds on the condition that state leaders could not cut taxes created unnecessary uncertainty, and served only to impede economic recovery. The decision rightly strikes down the political attempt to take away authority of the states."

Two major victories against the Biden Administration’s attempts to supersede state authority and control your taxes – in just his first 10 months in office. But we already know the battle is far from over. We told you how President Biden is already attempting to increase the size and power of the IRS in what could very likely be another attempt to target conservatives and even Christians. It happened before under the Obama-Biden IRS – which we roundly defeated in court, forcing the IRS to admit its misdeeds – and that’s why we must remain vigilant.

We’re already in federal court against the IRS. We’ve issued a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and filed a lawsuit against the IRS to expose exactly what the Biden IRS is up to. We already told you how President Biden wants to give the IRS the unconstitutional authority to spy on your bank accounts.

Just try to imagine what this cavalier Administration will do over the course of the next three years. If the radical Left gets its way, the Constitution will be nothing but shreds of once-sacred paper, and conservatives will pay the price. But rest assured, our legal team will be prepared to take immediate legal action, even all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

As we fight the dangerous agenda of the Biden Administration, we need you. Right now, every Tax-Deductible donation you make to the ACLJ is DOUBLED through our Matching Challenge.