National Organization for Marriage Data Breach (2015)

The National Organization for Marriage announced Thursday a lawsuit in federal court against the Internal Revenue Service for illegally releasing confidential tax documents to the Human Rights Campaign. After the leak of the documents in 2012, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), posted the confidential information on its website, which included the names of donors, who were subsequently harassed. The information was also republished by The Huffington Post. HRC published the Releasing confidential tax information without permission is a felony under federal law. "We have irrefutable proof that NOM's confidential tax return was released by the IRS and went to the number one opponent of marriage, the Human Rights Campaign whose president was a national co-chair of President Obama's re-election campaign. The HRC promptly published it and released it to the media," said Brian Brown, NOM's president. "This is a federal crime. Worse, the confidential information contained in the illegally leaked documents included the identity of dozens of our major donors and the HRC used this confidential donor information to harass our donors. This is a chilling set of circumstances that should ring alarm bells across the nation." The Justice Department will not confirm whether or not there is an ongoing investigation into the alleged crime. NOM was able to confirm that the documents published by HRC came from the IRS by discovering a stamp on the documents that could only come from the IRS.