I think the important term here is “substaintial”. As in a church can’t spend a “substaintial” amount of their time and/or resources attempting to influence legislation. They are permitted to do so (to remain tax exempt) they just can’t spend a substaintial amount of resources doing so.
Yes it’s case by case but as another poster pointed out no church has ever been prosecuted by the IRS under this rule, quite frankly because it would be bad press. For them and their leftist agenda even in today’s corrupt culture.
So there won’t be any cases before the Supremes.
If there is certainly that would be a cause for concern. So I’m not going to say it definitely won’t happen. Not in this current climate so hostile to religion. But it just seems like too much of a stretch to me. I just can’t see how it could even be argued in court that these or any church spends a “substantial” amount of their time or money attempting to influence legislation.
Pushing against one local ordinance hardly seems like spending a “substaintial” amount of time or money spent “influencing legislation”. It’s not like these churches are preaching every week about resisting Obamacare or even local traffic tickets or any other local ordinance. We are only talking about a few sermons given over a few weeks as far as I’m aware. Hardly a “substantial” effort to “influence legislation”.