Group Federal Tax Exemptions

After 5 ½ years, the IRS has announced that it will once again accept applications for group tax exemptions (Revenue Procedure 2026-8). A group exemption is a way for local units (State chapters, e.g.) of a larger parent or “central” association to achieve 501(c) status without having to go through the normal application process. The IRS also set forth the requirements for group exemptions, including existing group exemptions. These requirements largely mirror those already in place, but there are some deviations, and AMCs with clients that have group exemptions should nevertheless ensure that those exemptions comply. If they do not, there is a grace period until January 2027. A key requirement is that the parent association have “general supervision or control” over the local units. Under the new procedure, an affiliation agreement or charter may be sufficient to satisfy that requirement. Each local unit must have its own EIN. One noteworthy new requirement is that a parent association will now be limited to only one group exemption.

DOJ and FTC Seek Public Comment on New Collaboration Guidelines

The US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission have launched a joint public inquiry regarding potential additional guidance on collaborations among competitors. This is intended to help the Antitrust Division and FTC with their effort to develop up-to-date guidance to the business community, building on the previous 2000 Antitrust Guidelines for Collaborations Among Competitors that were withdrawn in 2023. The 2000 Guidelines had included a “safe harbor” for the exchange of information among competitors, upon which many associations and their members had relied.

Some of the specific areas of inquiry on which DOJ/FTC are seeking public input and information include:

• What topics would benefit from additional guidance?
• What new technologies and business models would benefit from additional guidance — for example, algorithmic pricing, information and data sharing, or labor collaborations?
• What significant legal, economic, or technological developments should be considered in any revisions to the prior competitor collaboration guidelines?

Comments can be submitted at www.regulations.gov/docket/ATR-2026-0001/document and must be received no later than April 24, 2026.

Court Addresses Dual Loyalty of Trade Association Board Members

In possibly first decision of its kind, a court addresses directly the inherent conflict of interest that members of the board of directors of a trade association have by virtue of serving the association and being beholden to their employers as member companies of the association.

Certified Steel Stud Association, Inc. v. Gardner (OH. 2026).

It was alleged that certain association board members were disloyal to the association in voting on key matters because “they were only considering the best interests of [their employers],” and they “lacked independence and were ‘dominated or controlled’ by their respective employers, whose interests were not aligned with the [association’s] interests.” The court disagreed: “While [the board members] had dual loyalties with respect to the [association] and their respective employers, the record supports the conclusion that the [association] and its member companies were aligned with respect to the [matters at issue].” In reaching this conclusion, the court noted that the association is exempt under Section 501(c)(6), and per the US Tax Code, such an organization is “created to promote the common business interests of its members,” and their “activities should be directed to the improvement of business conditions of one or more lines of business.” Therefore, the court held, while “there is no dilution of the

duty of loyalty when a director holds dual or multiple fiduciary obligations, no conflict exists if the interests of the [association and the member companies] are aligned.”

HR Association Liable for Employment Discrimination

Mohamed v. Society for Human Resource Management (D. Colo. 2025).

In December 2025, a federal jury in Colorado ordered the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) to pay $11.5 million to a former employee after finding SHRM liable for racial discrimination and retaliation. The award included $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages. According to the complaint, SHRM conducted only sham investigations of the employee’s internal complaints of discrimination and retaliation and focused more on devising a scheme to fire the employee without being sued. It is important to bear in mind that when a current employee complains of discrimination (or harassment or retaliation), every subsequent performance step or disciplinary action will be scrutinized, and if there is litigation, all files, emails, and other records will be revealed.

Parent Association Sues its Foundation for Breaking Away

National Rifle Association v. NRA Foundation (D.C. 2026).

The NRA, a 501(c)(4) association, created the NRA Foundation in 1990 as a controlled subsidiary to support the NRA’s charitable activities. Until recently, the Foundation acted like a typical association foundation, supporting the parent association.

The NRA sought to ensure control of the NRA Foundation by including a provision in the NRA Foundation Bylaws requiring that all members of the NRA Foundation Board of Trustees must be appointed by the NRA. However, the NRA apparently neglected to ensure that the Bylaws could not be amended without the NRA’s approval. As a result, according to the lawsuit, the NRA Foundation jettisoned the Bylaw provision giving the NRA control and then elected new Trustees who are not beholden to the NRA. The NRA’s lawsuit focuses largely on trademark infringement, i.e., the NRA Foundation’s continued use of the NRA name, logo, and other intellectual property.

Medical Societies Sued Over Their Clinical Guidelines

The Florida Attorney General has sued several associations, including the Endocrine Society and the American Academy for Pediatrics, for allegedly “misleading public opinion on the safety of ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors.” The core of the lawsuit argues that the defendant associations created a “manufactured consensus” to promote lucrative medical interventions while suppressing evidence that such treatments are experimental and allegedly potentially harmful.

There is a political component to this case, but it could set a precedent beyond politics. Central to the case are certain clinical guidelines published by the Endocrine Society and the American Academy for Pediatrics. Clinical guidelines are essentially recommendations to physicians based on the best available evidence. Traditionally, clinical guidelines have been considered protected opinion, and, except in rare cases, not a source of liability. This lawsuit alleges that the subject clinical guidelines are not evidence-based but instead were developed to promote an ideology and to “sell memberships and generate business for [the association’] members.”

Florida Attorney General v. World Professional Association for Transgender Health, Endocrine Society, and American Academy Of Pediatrics (Fla. 2025).

Scholarly Journal Lawsuit Dismissed

The plaintiffs in this case, a group of scholars, scientists, and professors, claim that publishers of peer-reviewed scholarly journals – Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Sage, Springer, Taylor & Francis and Wolters

Kluwer Health, Inc. - and their trade association, the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers, conspired to suppress competition by adopting a set of principles that: (1) prohibit authors from submitting their manuscripts to more than one journal at a time; (2) restrict the exchange of scientific research while a manuscript is under submission; and (3) enact requirements that peer review work be uncompensated.

As evidence that the publishers entered into an agreement with each other on these matters, the plaintiffs cite the “International Ethical Principles for Scholarly Publication” published by their trade association, the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers. But the court rejected the assertion that these Principles are proof of an actual agreement necessary to support an allegation of an antitrust conspiracy:

To read the Principles as anything other than a collection of policies and guidelines concerning best practices for publishers, editors, and authors involved in the scholarly publication process requires a significant inferential leap. To arrive at Plaintiffs’ interpretation that four out of the 21 Principles are actually a set of three “rules” that bind the Defendants to anticompetitive practices not only requires a tortured reading of the provisions that make up Plaintiffs’ purported “rules,” but otherwise ignores the plain language of the Principles as a whole.”

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