Has your faith-based nonprofit ever considered buying, building, or developing real estate? If so, you know real estate can present a major issue for religious organizations. A minefield of permits, applications, and meetings may stand between you and the property that will allow your organization to best accomplish its mission. The federal government passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”), which addresses some of these difficulties for religious organizations. A little information about land use and RLUIPA can go a long way in helping your organization to flourish. This whitepaper aims to educate religious organizations seeking to buy or build buildings and property for their organization and help them avoid costly obstacles when seeking building permits, special use permits, variances, or other rezonings.

Faith-based nonprofits may be subject to new reporting requirements under a new disclosure rule. On September 29, 2022, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) issued a final rule implementing the Corporate Transparency Act’s (“CTA”) beneficial ownership information reporting provisions. As discussed below, for purposes of the CTA, a nonprofit’s beneficial owners aren’t just “owners” in the colloquial sense. The term includes people of influence over the organization, such as donors, directors, and possibly even staff. The CTA’s purpose is to counter illicit use of the U.S. financial system.

Nonprofits often work with a variety of artists, thought leaders, and scholars when they create content, including graphic designers, animators, professors, authors, and even musicians. Outside experts can help to create strong curricula, sermons, blog posts, videos, or whatever else an organization may need. As they enter these business relationships, nonprofits will ask themselves questions like “how much will it cost?”; “do I like the art style?”; and “again, how much will it cost?” But most will never think to ask “who owns it?”

In 2022, when a draft of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion was leaked to the media, the New York state government passed a series of laws related to abortion. These laws particularly targeted pregnancy centers that do not offer abortion services and so affected many religious organizations that minister to women in crisis pregnancies. The Sisters of Life, a community of religious sisters who take vows to protect human life, filed a lawsuit in response and succeeded in protecting their religious liberty.

Individuals often express their religious beliefs by establishing and working for faith-based non-profits. A faith-based organization should therefore have a foundational understanding of the constitutional protections the First Amendment extends to it, particularly as these protections relate to the organization’s religious activity. This whitepaper provides a brief overview of the scope of these protections and offers some guidance for ways an organization can protect itself from and, if necessary, respond to laws and regulations that may infringe on its religious liberty rights.