In "National Organization for Marriage Claims IRS Leaked Confidential Tax Info," the Weekly Standard reports that Mitt Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC donated $10,000 to NOM, a 501(c)(4) non-profit group not legally required to disclose its donors, and that NOM believes only the IRS could be the source of the information. At Nonprofit Law Prof Blog, Notre Dame law professor Lloyd Mayer speculates about why the media isn't paying attention to the story:
If true, this is a very serious situation as it suggests someone inside the IRS has decided to leak confidential taxpayer information, almost certainly for political reasons. Yet there has been surprisingly little if any news coverage of this story, other than in the tax trade press (Tax Notes Today (subscription required)) and a blog entry at the Weekly Standard. While media bias with respect to coverage of the same-sex marriage debate could be the explanation, another possibility is that despite much rhetoric about the importance of taxpayer privacy, in the age of Facebook and Twitter people view such privacy as much less important - particularly when it comes to donations to charities - than is generally assumed.
The importance of privacy concerning support for controversial political issues was at the heart of Doe v. Reed, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010. The Court held that the disclosure of the identity of people who sign petitions for ballot proposals does not normally violate the First Amendment.
