Related: In another impressive opinion on Friday by an appointee of President Trump to the Seventh Circuit, Judge Michael B. Brennan penned a unanimous panel ruling (in Gaylor v. Mnuchin) holding that the exclusion of housing allowances from ministers’ taxable income does not violate the Establishment Clause. The panel ruled that the exclusion satisfied both the Lemon test (from Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971)) and the “historical significance” test of Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014). Among other things, the panel found that the exclusion “is simply one of many per se rules that provide a tax exemption to employees with work-related housing requirements” and that it comports with “a lengthy tradition of tax exemptions for religion, particularly for church-owned properties.”

In a press release, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented ministers in the case, observes that striking down the parsonage allowance would have “devastate[d] small, low-income houses of worship in our neediest neighborhoods.”

The panel ruling reverses a ruling against the parsonage allowance by senior district judge Barbara B. Crabb. This is the second time that Crabb, a Carter appointee, has been reversed on this issue: her first ruling against the parsonage allowance, back in 2013, was reversed by a unanimous Seventh Circuit panel on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the allowance. (Crabb’s ruling in 2010 that President Obama violated the Establishment Clause by proclaiming a National Day of Prayer was also reversed by the Seventh Circuit for lack of standing.)