Church of Scientology v. Internal Revenue Service

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that “if § 6103 forbids the disclosure of material, it may not be produced in response to a request under the FOIA”
• recognizing the presumption under § 6103 that “returns and return information are confidential and not to be disclosed”
• stating that a judicial act “does not become 24 less judicial by virtue of an allegation of malice or corruption of motive”
• holding the IRS could not release confidential information, even where identifying taxpayer information was redacted, because “[o]ne of the major purposes in revising § 6103 was to tighten the restrictions on the use of return information by entities other than [the IRS]”
• rejecting attempt by Church to require IRS to disclose information relating to Church in IRS case files and data systems
• finding that the FOIA’s de novo standard of review applies

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).