With unusually strong language, a federal appeals court upbraided Justice Department lawyers representing the Internal Revenue Service for refusing to turn over discovery documents connected to a Tea Party lawsuit.
The class-action case stems from the IRS targeting controversy that erupted in 2013 dealing with its treatment of politically active conservative groups. . . .
The plaintiffs, led by NorCal Tea Party Patriots, filed their complaint in May 2013 but are still battling Justice Department tax division lawyers over discovery issues. The government, which disputes the claims and has sought to dismiss the lawsuit, has resisted turning over the “names and other identifying information” of similar organizations that applied for tax-exempt status. The applicant names, the government argues, are shielded from disclosure by a federal law.
After a lower court ordered the IRS to produce the names and other documents, the government intensified its push-back last year by filing a petition for a writ of mandamus with the Sixth Circuit that sought to “correct a clear legal error on the part of the trial court” resulting in “significant and irreversible” harm.
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“[In this lawsuit the IRS has only compounded the conduct that gave rise to it,” wrote Judge Raymond Kethledge, a President George W. Bush appointee in an opinion joined by Damon Jerome Keith, a senior judge and Carter appointee, and David McKeague, another Bush appointee.
“The lawyers in the Department of Justice have a long and storied tradition of defending the nation’s interests and enforcing its laws — all of them, not just selective ones — in a manner worthy of the Department’s name. The conduct of the IRS’s attorneys in the district court falls outside that tradition,” Judge Kethledge wrote.
