The I.R.S. said on Monday that churches and other houses of worship should be allowed to endorse political candidates to their congregations, carving out an exemption in a decades-old ban on political activity by tax-exempt nonprofits.
The agency made that statement in a court filing intended to settle a lawsuit filed by two Texas churches and an association of Christian broadcasters.
The plaintiffs that sued the I.R.S. had previously asked a federal court in Texas to create an even broader exemption — to rule that all nonprofits, religious and secular, were free to endorse candidates to their members. That would have erased a bedrock idea of American nonprofit law: that tax-exempt groups cannot be used as tools of any campaign.
Instead, the I.R.S. agreed to a narrower carveout — one that experts in nonprofit law said might sharply increase politicking in churches, even though it mainly seemed to formalize what already seemed to be the agency’s unspoken policy.
