July 24, 2003 | Read Time: 1 minute
A federal appeals court has declined to rule on whether a Louisiana sales-tax exemption for churches and other religious groups is constitutional, saying the matter belongs in state court.
The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said that because the case involved state taxes, the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the state, would have to pursue the matter in state court if it wanted to continue with its complaint.
The ACLU has filed a petition asking the judges to reconsider their decision. “We believe they misread the law on this,” says Joe Cook, executive director of ACLU of Louisiana.
“This is a church-and-state issue,” Mr. Cook adds, saying that it should be decided in federal court. “This is an issue that should be of concern to all nonprofits,” he says, because it involves tax breaks for religious groups that are not available for other charities.
A U.S. district judge had previously said that Louisiana’s exemptions were given for a religious purpose and thus unconstitutional because they violated the required separation between church and state.
Under Louisiana law, churches, synagogues, religious camps, and retreats need not pay sales tax on purchases of Bibles, song books, and religious textbooks.
Courts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island threw out similar sales-tax exemptions for religious publications in 1999, declaring them unconstitutional. However, Louisiana is not bound by another state’s decision. The matter has never come before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The case is American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Louisiana v. Cynthia Bridges, Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Revenue, No. 02-30493.
