June 6, 2016; Fox News

In response to a class action lawsuit, the IRS released a list of 426 organizations it says were singled out for special scrutiny beginning in 2010 in what became known as the IRS scandal. The list is larger than the 298 overwhelmingly conservative groups identified by U.S. Treasury Inspector J. Russell George in his May 2013 report that first brought the scandal to public attention.

The IRS resisted releasing the list, citing taxpayer privacy and confidentiality protections included in Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code. However, the judge hearing the case decided any 6103 issues should not be used by the IRS to stop the suit’s plaintiffs from securing information they could use to recruit additional targeted nonprofits to their class action.

Most people have lost track of the IRS scandal, and some even deny to this day that there ever was a scandal. Paul Caron, a law Professor at Pepperdine University, is continuing to keep count of the days. (June 7, 2016 is Day 1125.) The House Judiciary Committee is considering the impeachment of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, but this is widely seen as a partisan exercise by Republicans—even by those who believe others, especially former Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner, should be held accountable for their actions in the IRS targeting scandal.

One observation NPQ has made in the past bears restating as the political and judicial processes continue: The public disclosure of much of what we have learned over the past year or more has come as the result of nonprofit advocacy and the access of nonprofit advocates to support from federal courts. Groups such as Judicial Watch and Cause of Action have peppered executive agencies with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and sued in court when their requests were refused or ignored.  The class action lawsuit is led by the NorCal Tea Party Patriots, a 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofit and one of the groups targeted by the IRS. Judicial Watch and Cause of Action are also aggressively pursuing other issues associated with political conservatives, including Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails and the Obama administration’s enforcement of immigration laws. There is a developing appearance that nonprofit advocacy groups, with judicial support, are having better success than Congress in investigating the executive branch of the federal government and securing the release of documentary evidence.—Michael Wyland