Virginia ranks #29 overall out of the 51 U.S. jurisdictions for its friendliness towards faith-based nonprofit organizations. Virginia has several laws that facilitate the contributions of faith-based nonprofits, including an automatic exemption from state corporate income tax for religious organizations that have 501(c)(3) status and a RFRA statute. Virginia, however, some policies that are burdensome to faith-based nonprofits operating in the state, such as a broad Blaine Amendment, state sales tax with only narrow exemptions for religious organizations, and nondiscrimination laws regarding public accommodations that include no meaningful exemptions for religious organizations.
The Virginia Constitution has been interpreted by the Virginia Supreme Court to provide stronger protections for religious free exercise or worship than the federal First Amendment (as currently interpreted by the US Supreme Court).
Virginia has enacted a RFRA that protects the religious free exercise of all individuals and entities by requiring government burdens on religious exercise to satisfy strict scrutiny. Since the RFRA is a statute rather than a state constitutional provision, Virginia does not receive the highest score for this factor.
Virginia’s nondiscrimination laws generally restrict religious freedom for religious organizations that offer public programming and facilities and provide no meaningful religious accommodations or exemptions.
Virginia law provides that religious worship can only be prohibited or restricted by an emergency order that applies equally to all comparable secular entities in the jurisdiction, as required by Tandon v. Newsom.
The Virginia Constitution contains a Blaine Amendment that broadly restricts faith-based organizations’ freedom to participate in public benefit programs on the same terms as similarly situated secular institutions. Current U.S. Supreme Court precedent has rendered this language ineffective in many cases, but it could become effective in the future if Court precedent changes.
Virginia nonprofit corporation law does not have any law deferring to religious beliefs and structures in governance matters and does not have any special provisions specific to the internal governance or operations of religious organizations.
Virginia law permits a director, in the fulfillment of the director’s fiduciary duties, to rely on the opinion of individuals who can reasonably be assumed to have expertise on a certain matter but does not expressly allow a director to rely on guidance from religious figures within his or her faith tradition.
Virginia imposes a sales and use tax on religious organizations’ sales and only provides limited exemptions for certain items, such as occasional sales of food items.
Virginia imposes a sales and use tax on religious organizations’ purchases and provides an automatic, comprehensive, narrow entity-based exemption for organizations such as churches, with supplementary entity-based exemptions generally available upon application.
Virginia imposes property tax but, upon application, generally provides an exemption to religious organizations for property used for religious and/or charitable purposes.
