Tuesday, May 7, 2024
ICNL Report on Foreign Influence Registration Laws
Last week, my fellow blogger Joseph Mead posted a link to a report “Ten Major Threats to U.S. Civil Society” by the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law, which I highly recommend for anyone worried about trends in U.S. civil society. But I also wanted to mention another report issued by ICNL last month, Foreign Influence Registration Laws and Civil Society. This report is primarily focused on laws directed at monitoring, threatening, or attacking NGOs with foreign ties or funding by governments other than the United States. But the report points out that many foreign governments “have sought to justify and defend their overbroad and restrictive foreign influence laws by pointing to similar measures in historic democracies, most notably the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in the United States.” A panel at the ABA Tax Section EO Committee meeting last week included both Doug Rutzen, the director of ICNL, and Bryson Morgan, an attorney at Caplin & Drysdale. Morgan explained how pending regulations under FARA could broaden the types of persons subject to the FARA reporting regime (which is already very broad) and further undermine U.S. civil society groups with international connections. Some of us in the nonprofit sector like to think of the U.S. as an international model for nonprofit sector laws, but of course that is only part of the story.
-Benjamin Leff
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/nonprofit/2024/05/icnl-report-on-foreign-influence-registration-laws.html