Today the judge in this matter of the National Organization for Marriages lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for leaking NOM’s 2009 – 990 tax return hit a major set-back as the judge hearing the case  has concluded that the IRS’s disclosure, if there was one since it had never been proved of NOM’c confidential 2008 donor schedule as neither willful nor gross negligence. Which will rule out punitive damages that the anti-gay hate group might have received.

In April 2012, the Huffington Post and the Human Rights Campaign,  posted NOM tax documents indicating GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney had given $10,000 to the anti-gay marriage group.  Unfortunately this also happened while the GOP witch-hunt and targeting the IRS in behalf of Tea Party groups who were being investigated for worthiness of non-profit status. (Which many were not.)

Smelling the possibility of some money and publicity NOM’s President Brian Brownshirt  jumped on the teabagistan bandwagon declaring that the IRS leaked their returns (despite the fact that the forms there were pictured showed have no IRS markings) and filed a lawsuit claiming that it was all “a chilling set of circumstances that should ring alarm bells across the nation.”

*cough * Drama Queen *cough*

With the judges ruling and also an additional ruling of dismissing the unlawful inspection claim  the issue remaining for trial is NOM’s actual damages as a result of this disclosure. 

Which will probably be nothing.

H/T to David Cary Hart of The Slowly Boiled Frog